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THE 

LIFE OF ST. PAUL 



BY 
Prof. JAMES STALKER, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST" 



WITH FOREWORD BY 
WILBERT W. WHITE, D.D. 

PRESIDENT OF THE BIBLE TEACHERS' TRAINING SCHOOL, NEW YORK 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 Nassau Street, New York 



*% 



Copyright, 1912, by 
American Tract Society 



©CI.A330007 



I 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 5 

I. His Place in History 7 

II. His Unconscious Preparation for His Work . 16 

III. His Conversion ......... 34 

IV. His Gospel 44 

V. The Work Awaiting the Worker .... 57 

VI. His Missionary Travels 65 

VII. His Writings and His Character 89 

VIII. Picture of a Pauline Church 102 

IX. His Great Controversy 113 

X. The End 125 

Hints to Teachers and Questions for Pupils . . .145 



FOREWORD 

By Wilbert W. White, D. D. 

When asked to write a foreword to Dr. Stalker's 
"Life of St. Paul," I thought of two things: first the 
impression which 4 had received from a sermon that I 
heard Dr. Stalker preach a good many years ago in 
his own pulpit in Glasgow, Scotland, and secondly, the 
honor conferred in this privilege of writing a foreword to 
one of Dr. Stalker's books. 

I felt sure before even glancing at the pages that I 
should be pleased and profited by their perusal. 

The first thing that I did was to glance over the 
pages for the headings of chapters and the summaries 
of paragraphs. I found the arrangement admirable, 
and would advise those into whose hands this fine volume 
may come to follow this plan. 

The only sentence apart from the headings which I 
read in the aforesaid preview was the last one in Chapter 
X, and that because the closing words, "the best of 
friends," especially arrested my attention. 

I wondered before I read this sentence if the author 
was saying of Paul that he was going out of the world 
to the One who had been to him the best of friends. 
From this you may gather — what you like. Only I felt 
sure before reading the pages that Dr. Stalker would 
interpret Paul in a manner such as I could enthusiasti- 
cally approve. 

And now having read the volume I heartily commend 
it. It is the best brief life of Paul of which I know. 



6 FOREWORD 

Before reading the book I said to myself, I shall put 
down what I think the writer will make the heart of the 
secret of Paul. It was this : The key to Paul's efficiency 
was his wholehearted persistent loyalty to Christ, his 
Saviour and Friend. He was not disobedient to the 
heavenly vision. He stood fast in the liberty wherewith 
Christ set him free. He was three things all stated in 
one verse, and put thus : "I am crucified with Christ — 
Christ liveth in me — I live in faith." 

Here are some, a very few of many striking, true 
thoughts presented by Dr. Stalker: 

"Paul was the interpreter of Christ, saying what 
Christ Himself would have said under the circumstances." 

"Paul's entire theology was nothing but the explica- 
tion of his own conversion." 

"In bringing Paul West, Providence gave to Europe 
a blessed priority, and the fate of our continent was de- 
cided, when Paul crossed the JEgean." 

"A secret of Paul's success was his sense of having 
a mission and his freedom alike from the bondage of 
bigotry and the bondage of liberty." 

A writer recently gave me this thought about Paul: 
"What makes St. Paul so interesting is his conception 
of the dimensions of life." 

Back to Christ? Yes, the whole world needs it, but 
the way to get back to Christ is through the Apostolic 
interpretation of Christ in words and life. This is the 
only way, and Dr. Stalker's book is a great help in this 
direction. 



THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

CHAPTER I 
HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 

Paragraphs 1-12. 

1, 2. The Man Needed by the Time. 
3, 4. A Type of Christian Character. 
5-8. The Thinker of Christianity. 
9-12. The Missionary of the Gentiles. 

1. The Man for the Time. — There are some men 
whose lives it is impossible to study without receiving the 
impression that they were expressly sent into the world tc- 
do a work required by the juncture of history on which 
they fell. The story of the Reformation, for example, 
cannot be read by a devout mind without wonder at the 
providence by which such great men as Luther, Zwingli, 
Calvin and Knox were simultaneously raised up in different 
parts of Europe to break the yoke of the papacy and repub- 
lish the gospel of grace. When the Evangelical Revival, 
after blessing England, was about to break into Scotland 
and end the dreary reign of Moderatism, there was raised 
up in Thomas Chalmers a mind of such capacity as com- 
pletely to absorb the new movement into itself, and of 
such sympathy and influence as to diffuse it to every cor- 
ner of his native land. 

2. This impression is produced by no life more than 
by that of the Apostle Paul. He was given to Christian- 

7 



8 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

ity when it was in its most rudimentary beginnings. It 
was not, indeed, feeble, nor can any mortal man be spoken 
of as indispensable to it ; for it contained within itself 
the vigor of a divine and immortal existence, which could 
not but have unfolded itself in the course of time. But, 
if we recognize that God makes use of means which com- 
mend themselves even to our eyes as suited to the ends He 
has in view, then we must say that the Christian movement 
at the moment when Paul appeared upon the stage was in 
the utmost need of a man of extraordinary endowments, 
who, becoming possessed with its genius, should incorpo- 
rate it with the general history of the world ; and in Paul 
it found the man it needed. 

3. A Type of Christian Character. — Christianity 
obtained in Paul an incomparable type of Christian 
character. It already, indeed, possessed the perfect 
model of human character in the person of its Founder. 
But He was not as other men, because from the beginning 
He had no sinful imperfection to struggle with; and 
Christianity still required to show what it could make of 
imperfect human nature. Paul supplied the opportunity 
of exhibiting this. He was naturally of immense mental 
stature and force. He would have been a remarkable 
man even if he had never become a Christian. The 
other apostles would have lived and died in the obscurity 
of Galilee if they had not been lifted into prominence by 
the Christian movement ; but the name of Saul of Tarsus 
would have been remembered still in some character or 
other even if Christianity had never existed. Christianity 
got the opportunity in him of showing to the world the 
whole force it contained. Paul was aware of this himself, 
though he expressed it with perfect modesty, when he said, 
' ' For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 9 

might Jesus Christ show forth all His long-suffering for 
an ensample of them who should hereafter believe on 
Him to everlasting life. 11 

4. His conversion proved the power of Christianity to 
overcome the strongest prejudices and to stamp its own 
type on a large nature by a revolution both instantaneous 
and permanent. Paul's was a personality so strong and 
original that no other man could have been less expected 
to sink himself in another ; but, from the moment when 
he came into contact with Christ, he was so overmastered 
with His influence that he never afterward had any other 
desire than to be the mere echo and reflection of Him to 
the world. 

But, if Christianity showed its strength in making so 
complete a conquest of Paul, it showed its worth no less 
in the kind of man it made of him when he had given 
himself up to its influence. It satisfied the needs of a 
peculiarly hungry nature, and never to the close of his 
life did he betray the slightest sense that this satisfaction 
was abating. His constitution was originally compounded 
of fine materials, but the spirit of Christ, passing into 
these, raised them to a pitch of excellence altogether 
unique. 

Nor was it ever doubtful either to himself or to others 
that it was the influence of Christ which made him what 
he was. The truest motto for his life would be his own 
saying, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." In- 
deed, so perfectly was Christ formed in him that we can 
now study Christ's character in his, and beginners may 
perhaps learn even more of Christ from studying Paul's 
life than from studying Christ's own. In Christ Himself 
there was a blending and softening of all the excellences 
which makes His greatness elude the glance of the begin- 



10 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

ner, just as the very perfection of Raphael's painting 
makes it disappointing to an untrained eye ; whereas in 
Paul a few of the greatest elements of Christian character 
were exhibited with a decisiveness which no one can mis- 
take, just as the most prominent characteristics of the 
painting of Rubens can be appreciated by every spectator. 

5. A Great Thinker. — Christianity obtained in Paul, 
secondly, a great thinker. This it specially needed at 
the moment. Christ had departed from the world, and 
those whom He had left to represent Him were unlettered 
fishermen and, for the most part, men of no intellectual 
mark. In one sense this fact reflects a peculiar glory on 
Christianity, for it shows that it did not owe its place as 
one of the great influences of the world to the abilities of 
its human representatives : not by might nor by power, 
but by the Spirit of God, was Christianity established in 
the earth. Yet, as we look back now, we can clearly see 
how essential it was that an apostle of a different stamp 
and training should arise. 

6. Christ had manifested forth the glory of the Father 
once for all and completed his atoning work. But this 
was not enough. It was necessary that the meaning of 
his appearance should be explained to the world. Who 
was he who had been here? what precisely was it he had 
done? To these questions the original apostles could 
give brief popular answers ; but none of them had the 
intellectual reach or the educational training necessary to 
put the answers into a form to satisfy the intellect of the 
world. Happily it is not essential to salvation to be 
able to answer such questions with scientific accuracy. 
There are tens of thousands who know and believe that 
Jesus was the Son of God and died to take away sin and, 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 11 

trusting to Him as their Saviour, are purified by faith, 
but who could not explain these statements at any length 
without falling into mistakes in almost every sentence. 
Yet, if Christianity was to make an intellectual as well 
as a moral conquest of the world, it was necessary for the 
Church to have accurately explained to her the full glory 
of her Lord and the meaning of his saving work. 

Of course Jesus had himself had in his mind a com- 
prehension both of what he was and of what he was doing 
which was luminous as the sun. But it was one of the 
most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry that he could 
not tell all his mind to his followers. They were not 
able to bear it ; they were too rude and limited to take it 
in. He had to carry his deepest thoughts out of the world 
with him unuttered, trusting with a sublime faith that 
the Holy Ghost would lead his Church to grasp them in 
the course of its subsequent development. Even what he 
did utter was very imperfectly understood. 

There was one mind, it is true, in the original apos- 
tolic circle of the finest quality and capable of soaring 
into the rarest altitudes of speculation. The words of 
Christ sank into the mind of John and, after lying there 
for half a century, grew up into the wonderful forms we 
inherit in his Gospel and Epistles. But even the mind 
of John was not equal to the exigency of the Church ; it 
was too fine, mystical, unusual. His thoughts to this 
day remain the property only of the few finest minds. 
There was needed a thinker of broader and more massive 
make to sketch the first outlines of Christian doctrine ; 
and he was found in Paul. 

7. Paul was a born thinker. His mind was of 
majestic breadth and force. It was restlessly busy, 
never able to leave any object with which it had to deal 



12 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

until it had pursued it back to its remotest causes and 
forward into all its consequences. It was not enough for 
him to know that Christ was the Son of God : he had to 
unfold this statement into its elements and understand 
precisely what it meant. It was not enough for him to 
believe that Christ died for sin : he had to go farther and 
inquire why it was necessary that He should do so and 
how His death took sin away. 

But not only had he from nature this speculative gift : 
his talent was trained by education. The other apostles 
were unlettered men ; but he enjoyed the fullest scholastic 
advantages of the period. In the rabbinical school he 
learned how to arrange and state and defend his ideas. 
We have the issue of all this in his Epistles, which con- 
tain the best explanation of Christianity possessed by the 
world. The right way to look at them is to regard them 
as the continuation of Christ's own teaching. They 
contain the thoughts which Christ carried away from the 
earth with him unuttered. Of course Jesus would have 
uttered them differently and far better. Paul's thoughts 
have everywhere the coloring of his own mental peculiar- 
ities. But the substance of them is what Christ's must 
have been if he had himself given them expression. 

8. There was one great subject especially which Christ 
had to leave unexplained — his own death. He could not 
explain it before it had taken place. This became the 
leading topic of Paul's thinking — to show why it was 
needed and what were its blessed results. But, indeed, 
there was no aspect of the appearance of Christ into which 
his restlessly inquiring mind did not penetrate. His 
thirteen Epistles, when arranged in chronological order, 
show that his mind was constantly getting deeper and 
deeper into the subject. The progress of his thinking 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 13 

was determined partly by the natural progress of his own 
advance in the knowledge of Christ, for he always wrote 
straight out of his own experience ; and partly by the 
various forms of error which he had at successive periods 
to encounter, and which became a providential means of 
stimulating and developing his apprehension of the truth, 
just as ever since in the Christian Church the rise of error 
has been the means of calling forth the clearest statements 
of doctrine. The ruling impulse, however, of his think- 
ing, as of his life, was ever Christ, and it was his lifelong 
devotion to this exhaustless theme that made him the 
Thinker of Christianity. 

9. The Missionary of the Gentiles. — Christianity 
obtained in Paul, thirdly, the missionary of the Gentiles. 
It is rare to find the highest speculative power united 
with great practical activity ; but these were united in 
him. He was not only the Church's greatest thinker, 
but the very foremost worker she has ever possessed. We 
have been considering the speculative task which was 
awaiting him when he joined the Christian community; 
but there was a no less stupendous practical task awaiting 
him too. This was the evangelization of the Gentile 
world. 

10. One of the great objects of the appearance of 
Christ was to break down the wall of separation between 
Jew and Gentile and make the blessings of salvation 
the property of all men, without distinction of race or 
language. But he was not himself permitted to carry 
this change into practical realization. It was one of the 
strange limitations of his earthly life that he was sent 
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It can 
easily be imagined how congenial a task it would have 



14 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

been to his intensely human heart to carry the gospel be- 
yond the limits of Palestine and make it known to nation 
after nation ; and — if it be not too bold to say so — this 
would certainly have been his chosen career, had he been 
spared. But he was cut off in the midst of his days and 
had to leave this task to his followers. 

11. Before the appearance of Paul on the scene, the 
execution of this task had been begun. Jewish prejudice 
had been partially broken down, the universal character 
of Christianity had been in some measure realized, and 
Peter had admitted the first Gentiles into the Church by 
baptism. But none of the original apostles was equal to 
the emergency. None of them was large-minded enough 
to grasp the idea of the perfect equality of Jew and 
Gentile and apply it without flinching in all its practical 
consequences ; and none of them had the combination of 
gifts necessary to attempt the conversion of the Gentile 
world on a large scale. They were Galilean fishermen, 
fit enough to teach and preach within the bounds of their 
native Palestine. But beyond Palestine lay the great 
world of Greece and Rome — the world of vast popula- 
tions, of power and culture, of pleasure and business. 
It needed a man of unlimited versatility, of education, 
of immense human sympathy and breadth, to go out 
there with the gospel message — a man who could not 
only be a Jew to the Jews, but a Greek to the Greeks, a 
Roman to the Romans, a barbarian to the barbarians — 
a man who could encounter not only rabbis in their syna- 
gogues, but proud magistrates in their courts and phil- 
osophers in the haunts of learning — a man who could 
face travel by land and by sea, who could exhibit pres- 
ence of mind in every variety of circumstances, and 
would be cowed by no difficulties. No man of this size 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 15 

belonged to the original apostolic circle ; but Christian- 
ity needed such an one, and he was found in Paul. 

12. Originally attached more strictly than any of 
the other apostles to the peculiarities and prejudices of 
Jewish exclusiveness, he cut his way out of the jungle 
of these prepossessions, accepted the equality of all men 
in Christ, and applied this principle relentlessly in all 
its issues. He gave his heart to the Gentile mission, 
and the history of his life is the history of how true he 
was to his vocation. There was never such singleness 
of eye or wholeness of heart. There was never such 
superhuman and untiring energy. There was never such 
an accumulation of difficulties victoriously met and of 
sufferings cheerfully borne for any cause. In him Jesus 
Christ went forth to evangelize the world, making use of 
his hands and feet, his tongue and brain and heart, for 
doing the work which in His own bodily presence He 
had not been permitted by the limits of His mission to 
accomplish. 



CHAPTER II 

HIS UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION 
FOR HIS WORK 



Paragraphs 13-36. 

14-16. DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH. His Love 
of Cities. 17, 18. HOME. 

19-26. EDUCATION. 19. Roman citizenship; 20. Tent- 
making; 21, 22. Knowledge of Greek Literature; 23- 
26. Rabbinical Training. Gamaliel. Knowledge of 
Old Testament. 

27-30. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 
28. The Law; 29, 30. Departure from and return to 
Jerusalem. 

31-33. STATE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
Stephen. 34-36. THE PERSECUTOR. 

13. God's Plan. — Persons whose conversion takes 
place after they are grown up are wont to look back 
upon the period of their life which has preceded this 
event with sorrow and shame and to wish that an obliter- 
ating hand might blot the record of it out of existence. 
St. Paul felt this sentiment strongly : to the end of his 
days he was haunted by the specters of his lost yeass, and 
was wont to say that he was the least of all the apostles, 
who was not worthy to be called an apostle, because he 
had persecuted the Church of God. But these somber 
sentiments are only partially justifiable. God's purposes 
are very deep, and even in those who know Him not He 
may be sowing seeds which will only ripen and bear fruit 
long after their godless career is over. Paul would never 

16 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 17 

have been the man he became or have done the work he 
did, if he had riot, in the years preceding his conversion, 
gone through a course of preparation designed to fit him 
for his subsequent career. He knew not what he was 
being prepared for; his own intentions about his future 
were different from God's ; but there is a divinity which 
shapes our ends, and it was making him a polished shaft 
for God's quiver, though he knew it not. 

14. Birth and Birthplace.— The date of Paul's 
birth is not exactly known, but it can be settled with a 
closeness of approximation which is sufficient for prac- 
tical purposes. When in the year 33 a.d. those who 
stoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Paul's feet, he 
was "a young man." This term has, indeed, in Greek 
as much latitude as in English, and may indicate any 
age from something under twenty to something over 
thirty. In this case it probably touched the latter rather 
than the former limit ; for there is reason to believe that 
at this time, or very soon after, he was a member of the 
Sanhedrin — an office which no one could hold who was 
under thirty years of age — and the commission he re- 
ceived from the Sanhedrin immediately afterward to 
persecute the Christians would scarcely have been en- 
trusted to a very young man. About thirty years after 
playing this sad part in Stephen's murder, in the year 
62 a.d., he was lying in a prison in Rome awaiting 
sentence of death for the same cause for which Stephen 
had suffered, and, writing one of the last of his Epistles, 
that to Philemon, he called himself an old man. This 
term also is one of great latitude, and a man who had 
gone through so many hardships might well be old before 
his time ; yet he could scarcely have taken the name of 
" Paul the aged" before sixty years of age. 



18 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

These calculations lead us to the conclusion that he 
was born about the same time as Jesus. When the boy 
Jesus was playing in the streets of Nazareth, the boy Paul 
was playing in the streets of his native town, away on 
the other side of the ridges of Lebanon. They seemed 
likely to have totally diverse careers. Yet, by the mys- 
terious arrangement of Providence, these two lives, like 
streams flowing from opposite watersheds, were one day, 
as river and tributary, to mingle together. 

15. The place of his birth was Tarsus, the capital of 
the province of Cilicia, in the southeast of Asia Minor. 
It stood a few miles from the coast, in the midst of a 
fertile plain, and was built upon both banks of the river 
Cydnus, which descended to it from the neighboring 
Taurus Mountains, on the snowy peaks of which the 
inhabitants of the town were wont, on summer evenings, 
to watch from the flat roofs of their houses the glow of 
the sunset. Not far above the town the river poured over 
the rocks in a vast cataract, but below this it became 
navigable, and within the town its banks were lined with 
wharves, on which was piled the merchandise of many 
countries, while sailors and merchants, dressed in the 
costumes and speaking the languages of different races, 
were constantly to be seen in the streets. The town 
enjoyed an extensive trade in timber, with which the 
province abounded, and in the long fine hair of the goats 
kept in thousands on the neighboring mountains, which 
was made into a coarse kind of cloth and manufactured 
into various articles, among which tents, such as Paul 
was afterward employed in sewing, formed an extensive 
article of merchandise all along the shores of the Medi- 
terranean. Tarsus was also the center of a large trans- 
port trade; for behind the town a famous pass, called 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 19 

the Cilician Gates, led up through the mountains to the 
central countries of Asia Minor; and Tarsus was the 
depot to which the products of these countries were 
brought down, to be distributed over the East and the 
West. 

The inhabitants of the city were numerous and 
wealthy. The majority of them were native Cilicians, 
but the wealthiest merchants were Greeks. The prov- 
ince was under the sway of the Romans, the signs of 
whose sovereignty could not be absent from the capital, 
although Tarsus itself enjoyed the privilege of self-gov- 
ernment. The number and variety of the inhabitants 
were still further increased by the fact that, like the city 
of Glasgow, Tarsus was not only a center of commerce, but 
also a seat of learning. It was one of the three princi- 
pal university cities of the period, the other two being 
Athens and Alexandria ; and it was said to surpass its 
rivals in intellectual eminence. Students from many 
countries were to be seen in its streets, a sight which 
could not but awaken in youthful minds thoughts about 
the value and the aims of learning. 

16. Who does not see how fit a place this was for 
the Apostle of the Gentiles to be born in? As he grew 
up, he was being unawares prepared to encounter men of 
every class and race, to sympathize with human nature 
in all its varieties, and to look with tolerance upon the 
most diverse habits and customs. In after life he was 
always a lover of cities. Whereas his Master avoided 
Jerusalem and loved to teach on the mountainside or 
the shore of the lake, Paul was constantly moving from 
one great city to another. Antioch, Ephesus, Athens, 
Corinth, Rome, the capitals of the ancient world, were 
the scenes of his activity. The words of Jesus are redo- 



20 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

lent of the country, and teem with pictures of its still 
beauty or homely toil — the lilies of the field, the sheep 
following the shepherd, the sower in the furrow, the 
fishermen drawing their nets ; but the language of Paul 
is impregnated with the atmosphere of the city and alive 
with the tramp and hurry of the streets. His imagery 
is borrowed from scenes of human energy and monuments 
of cultivated life — the soldier in full armor, the athlete 
in the arena, the building of houses and temples, the 
triumphal procession of the victorious general. So last- 
ing are the associations of the boy in the life of the man. 

17. Paul's Home. — Paul had a certain pride in the 
place of his birth, as he showed by boasting on one occa- 
sion that he was a citizen of no mean city. He had a 
heart formed by nature to feel the warmest glow of 
patriotism. Yet it was not for Cilicia and Tarsus that 
this fire burned. He was an alien in the land of his 
birth. His father was one of those numerous Jews who 
were scattered in that age over the cities of the Gentile 
world, engaged in trade and commerce. They had left 
the Holy Land, but they did not forget it. They never 
coalesced with the populations among which they dwelt 
but, in dress, food, religion and many other particulars 
remained a peculiar people. As a rule, indeed, they 
were less rigid in their religious views and more tolerant 
of foreign customs than those Jews who remained in 
Palestine. But Paul's father was not one who had given 
way to laxity. He belonged to the straitest sect of his 
religion. It is probable that he had not left Palestine 
long before his son's birth, for Paul calls himself a 
Hebrew of the Hebrews — a name which seems to have 
belonged only to the Palestinian Jews and to those whose 
connection with Palestine had continued very close. 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 21 

Of his mother we hear absolutely nothing, but every- 
thing seems to indicate that the home in which he was 
brought up was one of those out of which nearly all 
eminent religious teachers have sprung — a home of piety, 
of character, perhaps of somewhat stern principle, and 
of strong attachment to the peculiarities of a religious 
people. He was imbued with its spirit. Although he 
could not but receive innumerable and imperishable im- 
pressions from the city he was born in, the land and the 
city of his heart were Palestine and Jerusalem ; and the 
heroes of his young imagination were not Curtius and 
Horatius, Hercules and Achilles, but Abraham and 
Joseph, Moses and David and Ezra. As he looked back 
on the past, it was not over the confused annals of Cilicia 
that he cast his eyes, but he gazed up the clear stream of 
Jewish history to its sources in Ur of the Chaldees ; and, 
when he thought of the future, the vision which rose 
on him was the kingdom of the Messiah, enthroned in 
Jerusalem and ruling the nations with a rod of iron. 

18. The feeling of belonging to a spiritual aristoc- 
racy, elevated above the majority of those among whom 
he lived, would be deepened in him by what he saw of 
the religion of the surrounding population. Tarsus was 
the center of a species of Baal-worship of an imposing 
but unspeakably degrading character, and at certain 
seasons of the year it was the scene of festivals, which 
were frequented by the whole population of the neighbor- 
ing regions, and were accompanied with orgies of a 
degree of moral abominableness happily beyond the 
reach even of our imaginations. Of course a boy could 
not see the depths of this mystery of iniquity, but he 
could see enough to make him turn from idolatry with 
the scorn peculiar to his nation, and to make him regard 



22 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

the little synagogue where his family worshiped the 
Holy One of Israel as far more glorious than the gorgeous 
temples of the heathen ; and perhaps to these early expe- 
riences we may trace back in some degree those convic- 
tions of the depths to which human nature can fall and 
its need of an omnipotent redeeming force which after- 
ward formed so fundamental a part of his theology and 
gave such a stimulus to his work. 

19- Trade. — The time at length arrived for deciding 
what occupation the boy was to follow — a momentous 
crisis in every life — and in this case much was involved 
in the decision. Perhaps the most natural career for 
him would have been that of a merchant ; for his father 
was engaged in trade, the busy city offered splendid prizes 
to mercantile ambition, and the boy's own energy would 
have guaranteed success. Besides, his father had an ad- 
vantage to give him specially useful to a merchant: 
though a Jew, he was a Roman citizen, and this right 
would have given his son protection, into whatever part 
of the Roman world he might have had occasion to 
travel. How the father got this right we cannot tell ; 
it might be bought, or won by distinguished service to 
the state, or acquired in several other ways ; at all events 
his son was free-born. It was a valuable privilege, and 
one which was to prove of great use to Paul, though not 
in the way in which his father might have been expected 
to desire him to make use of it. But it was decided that 
he was not to be a merchant. The decision may have 
been due to his father's strong religious views, or his 
mother's pious ambition, or his own predilections; but 
it was resolved that he should go to college and become 
a rabbi — that is, a minister, a teacher and a lawyer all 
in one. It was a wise decision in view of the boy's spirit 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 23 

and capabilities, and it turned out to be of infinite 
moment for the future of mankind. 

20, But, although he thus escaped the chances which 
seemed likely to drift him into a secular calling, yet, 
before going away to prepare for the sacred profession, 
he was to get some insight into business life ; for it was a 
rule among the Jews that every boy, whatever might be 
the profession he was to follow, should learn a trade, as a 
resource in time of need. This was a rule with wisdom 
in it ; for it gave employment to the young at an age 
when too much leisure is dangerous, and acquainted the 
wealthy and the learned in some degree with the feelings 
of those who have to earn their bread with the sweat of 
their brow. The trade which he was put to was the 
commonest one in Tarsus — the making of tents from the 
goat's-hair cloth for which the district was celebrated. 
Little did he or his father think, when he began to handle 
the disagreeable material, of what importance this handi- 
craft was to be to him in subsequent years : it became 
the means of his support during his missionary journeys, 
and, at a time when it was essential that the propagators 
of Christianity should be above the suspicion of selfish 
motives, enabled him to maintain himself in a position 
of noble independence. 

21. Education. — It is a question natural to ask, 
whether, before leaving home to go and get his training 
as a rabbi, Paul attended the University of Tarsus. 
Did he drink at the wells of wisdom which flow from 
Mount Helicon before going to sit by those which spring 
from Mount Zion ? From the fact that he makes two 
or three quotations from the Greek poets it has been 
inferred that he was acquainted with the whole literature 



24 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

of Greece. But, on the other hand, it has been pointed 
out that his quotations are brief and commonplace, such 
as any man who spoke Greek would pick up and use 
occasionally; and the style and vocabulary of his 
Epistles are not those of the models of Greek literature, 
but of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, which was then in universal use among the 
Jews of the Dispersion. Probably his father would have 
considered it sinful to allow his son to attend a heathen 
university. Yet it is not likely that he grew up in a 
great seat of learning without receiving any influence 
from the academic tone of the place. His speech at 
Athens shows that he was able, when he chose, to wield 
a style much more stately than that of his writings, and 
so keen a mind was not likely to remain in total igno- 
rance of the great monuments of the language which he 
spoke. 

22. There were other impressions, too, which the 
learned Tarsus probably made upon him : its university 
was famous for those petty disputes and rivalries which 
sometimes ruffle the calm of academical retreats ; and it 
is possible that the murmur of these, with which the air 
was often filled, may have given the first impulse to that 
scorn for the tricks of the rhetorician and the windy dis- 
putations of the sophist which form so marked a feature 
in some of his writings. The glances of young eyes are 
clear and sure, and even as a boy he may have perceived 
how small may be the souls of men and how mean their 
lives, when their mouths are filled with the finest phrase- 
ology. 

23. The college for the education of Jewish rabbis 
was in Jerusalem, and thither Paul was sent about the 
age of thirteen. His arrival in the Holy City may have 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 25 

happened in the same year in which Jesus, at the age of 
twelve, first visited it, and the overpowering emotions 
of the boy from Nazareth at the first sight of the capital 
of his race may be taken as an index of the unrecorded 
experience of the boy from Tarsus. To every Jewish 
child of a religious disposition Jerusalem was the center 
of all things ; the footsteps of prophets and kings echoed 
in the streets ; memories sacred and sublime clung to its 
walls and buildings; and it shone in the glamor of 
illimitable hopes. 

24. It chanced that at this time the college of 
Jerusalem was presided over by one of the most noted 
teachers the Jews have ever possessed. This was 
Gamaliel, at whose feet Paul tells us he was brought 
up. He was called by his contemporaries the Beauty 
of the Law, and is still remembered among the Jews as 
the Great Rabbi. He was a man of lofty character and 
enlightened mind, a Pharisee strongly attached to the 
traditions of the fathers, yet not intolerant or hostile to 
Greek culture, as were some of the narrower Pharisees. 
The influence of such a man on an open mind like Paul's 
must have been very great ; and, although for a time the 
pupil became an intolerant zealot, yet the master's ex- 
ample may have had something to do with the conquest 
he finally won over prejudice. 

25. The course of instruction which a rabbi had to 
undergo was lengthened and peculiar. It consisted 
entirely of the study of the Scriptures and the comments 
of the sages and masters upon them. The words of 
Scripture and the sayings of the wise were committed 
to memory; discussions were carried on about disputed 
points; and by a rapid fire of questions, which the 
scholars were allowed to put as well as the masters, the 



26 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

wits of the students were sharpened and their views 
enlarged. The outstanding qualities of Paul's intellect, 
which were conspicuous in his subsequent life — his mar- 
velous memory, the keenness of his logic, the super- 
abundance of his ideas, and his original way of taking 
up every subject — first displayed themselves in this 
school, and excited, we may well believe, the warm 
interest of his teacher. 

26. He himself learned much here which was of 
great moment in his subsequent career. Although he 
was to be specially the missionary of the Gentiles, he 
was also a great missionary to his own people. In every 
city he visited where there were Jews he made his first 
public appearance in the synagogue. There his train- 
ing as a rabbi secured him an opportunity of speaking, 
and his familiarity with Jewish modes of thought and 
reasoning enabled him to address his audiences in the 
way best fitted to secure their attention. His knowledge 
of the Scriptures enabled him to adduce proofs from an 
authority which his hearers acknowledged to be supreme. 

Besides, he was destined to be the great theologian 
of Christianity and the principal writer of the New 
Testament. Now the New grew out of the Old ; the one 
is in all its parts the prophecy and the other the fulfill- 
ment. But it required a mind saturated not only with 
Christianity, but with the Old Testament, to bring this 
out ; and, at the age when the memory is most retentive, 
Paul acquired such a knowledge of the Old Testament 
that everything it contains was at his command: its 
phraseology became the language of his thinking; he 
literally writes in quotations, and he quotes from all 
parts with equal facility — from the Law, the Prophets, 
and the Psalms. Thus was the warrior equipped with 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 27 

the armor and the weapons of the Spirit before he knew 
in what cause he was to use them. 

27. His Religious Life. — Meantime what was his 
moral and religious state? He was learning to be a 
religious teacher; was he himself religious? Not all 
who are sent to college by their parents to prepare for 
the sacred office are so, and in every city of the world 
the path of youth is beset with temptations which may 
ruin life at its very beginning. Some of the greatest 
teachers of the Church, such as St. Augustine, have had 
to look back on half their life blotted and scarred with 
vice or crime. No such fall defaced Paul's early years. 
Whatever struggles with passion may have raged in his 
own breast, his conduct was always pure. Jerusalem 
was no very favorable place, in that age, for virtue. It 
was the Jerusalem against whose external sanctity, but 
internal depravity, our Lord a few years afterward 
hurled such withering invectives ; it was the very seat of 
hypocrisy, where an able youth might easily have learned 
how to win the rewards of religion, while escaping its 
burdens. But Paul was preserved amidst these perils, 
and could afterward claim that he had lived in Jerusalem 
from the first in all good conscience. 

28. He had brought with him from home the convic- 
tion, which forms the basis of a religious life, that the 
one prize which makes life worth living is the love and 
favor of God. This conviction grew into a passionate 
longing as he advanced in years, and he asked his teachers 
how the prize was to be won. Their answer was ready 
— By the keeping of the law. It was a terrible answer ; 
for the Law meant not only what we understand by the 
term, but also the ceremonial law of Moses and the thou- 



28 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

sand and one rules added to it by the Jewish teachers, 
the observance of which made life a purgatory to a tender 
conscience. 

But Paul was not the man to shrink from difficulties. 
He had set his heart upon winning God's favor, without 
which this life appeared to him a blank and eternity the 
blackness of darkness ; and, if this was the way to the 
goal, he was willing to tread it. Not only, however, 
were his personal hopes involved in this, the hopes of 
his nation depended on it too ; for it was the universal 
belief of his people that the Messiah would only come 
to a nation keeping the law, and it was even said that, 
if one man kept it perfectly for a single day, his merit 
would bring to the earth the King for whom they were 
waiting. Paul's rabbinical training, then, culminated 
in the desire to win this prize of righteousness, and he 
left the halls of sacred learning with this as the purpose 
of his life. The lonely student's resolution was momen- 
tous for the world ; for he was first to prove amidst secret 
agonies that this way of salvation was false, and then to 
teach his discovery to mankind. 

29. At Jerusalem. — We cannot tell in what year 
Paul's education at the college of Jerusalem was finished 
or where he went immediately afterward. The young 
rabbis, after completing their studies, scattered in the 
same way as our own divinity students do, and began 
practical work in different parts of the Jewish world. 
He may have gone back to his native Cilicia and held 
office in some synagogue there. At all events, he was 
for some years at a distance from Jerusalem and Pales- 
tine; for these were the very years in which fell the 
movement of John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus, 
and it is certain that Paul could not have been in the 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 29 

vicinity without being involved in both of these move- 
ments either as a friend or as a foe. 

30. But before long he returned to Jerusalem. It 
was as natural for the highest rabbinical talent to gravi- 
tate in those times to Jerusalem as it is for the highest 
literary and commercial talent to gravitate in our day to 
the metropolis. He arrived in the capital of Judaism very 
soon after the death of Jesus ; and we can easily imagine 
the representations of that event and of the career thereby 
terminated which he would receive from his Pharisaic 
friends. 

We have no reason to suppose that as yet he had any 
doubts about his own religion. We gather, indeed, from 
his writings that he had already passed through severe 
mental conflicts. Although the conviction still stood 
fast in his mind that the blessedness of life was attain- 
able only in the favor of God, yet his efforts to reach 
this coveted position by the observance of the law had 
not satisfied him. On the contrary, the more he strove 
to keep the law the more active became the motions of 
sin within him ; his conscience was becoming more op- 
pressed with the sense of guilt, and the peace of a soul 
at rest in God was a prize which eluded his grasp. 

Still he did not question the teaching of the syna- 
gogue. To him as yet this was of one piece with the 
history of the Old Testament, whence looked down on 
him the figures of the saints and prophets, which were 
a guarantee that the system they represented must be 
divine, and behind which he saw the God of Israel re- 
vealing himself in the giving of the law. The reason 
why he had not attained to peace and fellowship with 
God was, he believed, because he had not struggled 
enough with the evil of his nature or honored enough 



30 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

the precepts of the law. Was there no service by which 
he could make up for all deficiencies and win that grace 
at last in which the great of old had stood ? This was 
the temper of mind in which he returned to Jerusalem, 
and learned with astonishment and indignation of the 
rise of a sect which believed that Jesus who had been 
crucified was the Messiah of the Jewish people. 

31. State of the Christian Church. — Christianity 
was as yet only two or three years old, and was growing 
very quietly in Jerusalem. Although those who had 
heard it preached at Pentecost had carried the news of 
it to their homes in many quarters, its public representa- 
tives had not yet left the city of its birth. At first the 
authorities had been inclined to persecute it, and checked 
its teachers when they appeared in public. But they 
had changed their minds and, acting under the advice of 
Gamaliel, resolved to neglect it, believing that it would 
die out, if let alone. The Christians, on the other hand, 
gave as little offence as possible ; in the externals of re- 
ligion they continued to be strict Jews and zealous of the 
law, attending the temple worship, observing the Jewish 
ceremonies and respecting the ecclesiastical authorities. 

It was a kind of truce, which allowed Christianity a 
little space for secret growth. In their upper rooms the 
brethren met to break bread and pray to their ascended 
Lord. It was the most beautiful spectacle. The new 
faith had alighted among them like an angel, and was 
shedding purity on their souls from its wings and breath- 
ing over their humble gatherings the spirit of peace. 
Their love to each other was unbounded ; they were filled 
with the inspiring sense of discovery; and, as often as 
they met, their invisible Lord was in their midst. It 
was like heaven upon earth. While Jerusalem around 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 31 

them was going on in its ordinary course of worldliness 
and ecclesiastical asperity, these few humble souls were 
felicitating themselves with a secret which they knew to 
contain within it the blessedness of mankind and the 
future of the world. 

32. But the truce could not last, and these scenes of 
peace were soon to be invaded with terror and bloodshed. 
Christianity could not keep such a truce ; for there is in 
it a world-conquering force, which impels it at all risks 
to propagate itself, and the fermentation of the new wine 
of gospel liberty was sure sooner or later to burst the 
forms of the Jewish law. 

At length a man arose in the Church in whom these 
aggressive tendencies embodied themselves. This was 
Stephen, one of the seven deacons who had been ap- 
pointed to watch over the temporal affairs of the Chris- 
tian society. He was a man full of the Holy Ghost and 
possessed of capabilities which the brevity of his career 
only permitted to suggest but not to develop themselves. 
He went from synagogue to synagogue, preaching the 
Messiahship of Jesus and announcing the advent of free- 
dom from the yoke of the law. Champions of Jewish 
orthodoxy encountered him, but were not able to with- 
stand his eloquence and holy zeal. Foiled in argument, 
they grasped at other weapons, stirring up the authori- 
ties and the populace to murderous fanaticism. 

33. Stephen. — One of the synagogues in which these 
disputations took place was that of the Cilicians, the 
countrymen of Paul. May he have been a rabbi in this 
synagogue and one of Stephen's opponents in argument ? 
At all events, when the argument of logic was exchanged 
for that of violence, he was in the front. When the 



32 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

witnesses who cast the first stones at Stephen were strip- 
ping for their work, they laid down their garments at 
his feet. There, on the margin of that wild scene, in 
the field of judicial murder, we see his figure, standing 
a little apart and sharply outlined against the mass of 
persecutors unknown to fame — the pile of many-colored 
robes at his feet, and his eyes bent upon the holy martyr, 
who is kneeling in the article of death and praying: 
' ' Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. ' ' 

34. The Persecutor. — His zeal on this occasion 
brought Paul prominently under the notice of the 
authorities. It probably procured him a seat in the 
Sanhedrin, where we find him soon afterward giving his 
vote against the Christians. At all events, it led to his 
being entrusted with the work of utterly uprooting Chris- 
tianity, which the authorities now resolved upon. He 
accepted their proposal ; for he believed it to be God's 
work. He saw more clearly than any one else what was 
the drift of Christianity ; and it seemed to him destined, 
if unchecked, to overturn all that he considered most 
sacred. The repeal of the law was in his eyes the oblit- 
eration of the one way of salvation, and faith in a cruci- 
fied Messiah blasphemy against the divinest hope of 
Israel. Besides, he had a deep personal interest in the 
task. Hitherto he had been striving to please God, but 
always felt his efforts to come short ; here was a chance 
of making up for all arrears by one splendid act of 
service. This was the iron of agony in his soul which 
gave edge and energy to his zeal. In any case he was 
not a man to do things by halves ; and he flung himself 
headlong into his task. 

35. Terrible were the scenes which ensued. He flew 



UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION FOR WORK 33 

from synagogue to synagogue, and from house to house, 
dragging forth men and women, who were cast into 
prison and punished. Some appear to have been put to 
death, and — darkest trait of all — others were compelled 
to blaspheme the name of the Saviour. The Church at 
Jerusalem was broken in pieces, and such of its members 
as escaped the rage of the persecutor were scattered over 
the neighboring provinces and countries. 

36. It may seem too venturesome to call this the last 
stage of Paul's unconscious preparation for his apostolic 
career. But so indeed it was. In entering on the career 
of a persecutor he was going on straight in the line of 
the creed in which he had been brought up; and this 
was its reduction to absurdity. Besides, through the 
gracious working of Him whose highest glory it is out of 
evil still to bring forth good, there sprang out of these 
sad doings in the mind of Paul an intensity of humility, 
a willingness to serve even the least of the brethren of 
those whom he had abused, and a zeal to redeem lost 
time by the parsimonious use of what was left, which 
became permanent spurs to action in his subsequent 
career. 



CHAPTER III 
HIS CONVERSION 



Paragraphs 37-50. 

37, 38. Severity of the Persecution. 

39-42. Kicking against the Goad. 

43, 44. The Vision of Christ. 

45-48. Effect of his Conversion on his Thinking. 

49, 50. Its Effect on his Destiny. 

37. Severity of the Persecution. — It was the per- 
secutor's hope utterly to exterminate Christianity. But 
little did he understand its genius. It thrives on perse- 
cution. Prosperity has often been fatal to it, persecution 
never. "They that were scattered abroad went every- 
where preaching the word." Hitherto the Church had 
been confined within the walls of Jerusalem ; but now all 
over Judaea and Samaria, and in distant Phoenicia and 
Syria, the beacon of the gospel began in many a town and 
village to twinkle through the darkness, and twos and 
threes met together in upper rooms to impart to each 
other their joy in the Holy Ghost. 

38. We can imagine with what rage the tidings of 
these outbreaks of the fanaticism which he had hoped to 
stamp out would fill the persecutor. But he was not the 
person to be balked, and he resolved to hunt up the ob- 
jects of his hatred even in their most obscure and distant 
hiding-places. In one strange city after another he 
accordingly appeared, armed with the apparatus of the 
inquisitor, to carry his sanguinary purpose out. Having 

34 



HIS CONVERSION 35 

heard that Damascus, the capital of Syria, was one of 
the places where the fugitives had taken refuge, and that 
they were carrying on their propaganda among the nu- 
merous Jews of that city, he went to the high priest, who 
had jurisdiction over the Jews outside as well as inside 
Palestine, and got letters empowering him to seize and 
bind and bring to Jerusalem all of the new way of think- 
ing whom he might find there. 

39. Kicking Against the Goad. — As we see him 
start on this journey, which was to be so momentous, we 
naturally ask what was the state of his mind. His was 
a noble nature and a tender heart ; but the work he was 
engaged in might be supposed to be congenial only to 
the most brutal of mankind. Had his mind, then, been 
visited with no compunctions? Apparently not. We 
are told that, as he was ranging through strange cities 
in pursuit of his victims, he was exceedingly mad against 
them ; and, as he was setting out to Damascus, he was 
still breathing out threatenings and slaughter. He was 
sheltered against doubt by his reverence for the objects 
which the heresy imperiled; and, if he had to outrage 
his natural feelings in the bloody work, was not his 
merit all the greater? 

40. But on this journey doubt at last invaded his 
mind. It was a long journey of over a hundred and 
sixty miles; with the slow means of locomotion then 
available, it would occupy at least six days ; and a con- 
siderable portion of it lay across a desert, where there 
was nothing to distract the mind from its own reflections. 
In this enforced leisure doubts arose. What else can be 
meant by the word with which the Lord saluted him : 
"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad!" The 



36 THE LIFE OF ST. PAXIL 

figure of speech is borrowed from a custom of Eastern 
countries : the ox-driver wields a long pole, at the end of 
which is fixed a piece of sharpened iron, with which he 
urges the animal to go on or stand still or change its 
course ; and, if it is refractory, it kicks against the goad, 
injuring and infuriating itself with the wounds it re- 
ceives. This is a vivid picture of a man wounded and 
tortured by compunctions of conscience. There was 
something in him rebelling against the course of inhu- 
manity on which he was embarked and suggesting that 
he was fighting against God. 

41. It is not difficult to conceive whence these doubts 
arose. He was a scholar of Gamaliel, the advocate of 
humanity and tolerance, who had counseled the Sanhe- 
drin to leave the Christians alone. He was himself too 
young yet to have hardened his heart to all the dis- 
agreeables of such ghastly work. Highly strung as was 
his religious zeal, nature could not but speak out at last. 
But probably his compunctions were chiefly awakened by 
the character and behavior of the Christians. He had 
heard the noble defense of Stephen and seen his face in 
the council-chamber shining like that of an angel. He 
had seen him kneeling on the field of execution and pray- 
ing for his murderers. Doubtless, in the course of the 
persecution he had witnessed many similar scenes. Did 
these people look like enemies of God? As he entered 
their homes to drag them forth to prison, he got glimpses 
of their social life. Could such spectacles of purity and 
love be products of the powers of darkness? Did not the 
serenity with which his victims went to meet their fate 
look like the very peace which he had long been sighing 
for in vain? 

Their arguments, too, must have told on a mind like 



HIS CONVERSION 37 

his. He had heard Stephen proving from the Scriptures 
that it behooved the Messiah to suffer ; and the general 
tenor of the earliest Christian apologetic assures us that 
many of the accused must on their trial have appealed to 
passages like the fifty-third of Isaiah, where a career is 
predicted for the Messiah startingly like that of Jesus of 
Nazareth. He heard incidents of Christ's life from 
their lips which betokened a personage very different 
from the picture sketched for him by his Pharisaic in- 
formants: and the sayings of their Master which the 
Christians quoted did not sound like the utterances of 
the fanatic he conceived Jesus to have been. 

42. Such may have been some of the reflections 
which agitated the traveler as he moved onward, sunk 
in gloomy thought. But might not these be mere sug- 
gestions of temptation — the morbid fancies of a wearied 
mind, or the whispers of a wicked spirit attempting to 
draw him off from the service of Heaven? The sight of 
Damascus, shining out like a gem in the heart of the 
desert, restored him to himself. There, in the company 
of sympathetic rabbis and in the excitement of effort, he 
would dispel from his mind these fancies bred of soli- 
tude. So onward he pressed, and the sun of noonday, 
from which all but the most impatient travelers in the 
East take refuge in a long siesta, looked down upon him 
still urging forward his course toward the city gate. 

43. The Vision of Christ.— The news of Saul's 
coming had arrived at Damascus before him ; and the 
little flock of Christ was praying that, if it were possible, 
the progress of the wolf, who was on his way to spoil 
the fold, might be arrested. Nearer and nearer, however, 
he drew; he had reached the last stage of his journey; 



38 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

and at the sight of the place which contained his victims 
his appetite grew keener for the prey. But the Good 
Shepherd had heard the cries of the trembling flock and 
went forth to face the wolf on their behalf. Suddenly 
at midday, as Paul and his company were riding forward 
beneath the blaze of the Syrian sun, a light which dimmed 
even that fierce glare shone round about them, a shock 
vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment they 
found themselves prostrate upon the ground. The rest 
was for Paul alone : a voice sounded in his ears. ' ' Saul, 
Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" and, as he looked up 
and asked the radiant Figure that had spoken, ' ' Who art 
Thou, Lord?" the answer was, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
art persecuting. ' ' 

44. The language in which he ever afterward spoke 
of this event forbids us to think that it was a mere vision 
of Jesus he saw. He ranks it as the last of the appear- 
ances of the risen Saviour to His disciples, and places it 
on the same level as the appearances to Peter, to James, 
to the eleven, and to the five hundred. It was, in fact, 
Christ Jesus in the vesture of His glorified humanity, 
who for once had left the spot, wherever it may be in 
the spaces of the universe, where now he sits on His me- 
diatorial throne, in order to show Himself to this elect 
disciple ; and the light which outshone the sun was no 
other than the glory in which His humanity is there en- 
veloped. An incidental evidence of this was supplied 
in the words which were addressed to Paul. They were 
spoken in the Hebrew, or rather the Aramaic tongue — 
the same language in which Jesus had been wont to 
address the multitudes by the Lake and converse with 
His disciples in the desert solitudes ; and, as in the days 
of His flesh He was wont to open His mouth in parables, 



HIS CONVERSION 39 

so now He clothed His rebuke in a striking metaphor : 
"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. ' ' 

45. Effect on Paul's Thought. — It would be im- 
possible to exaggerate what took place in the mind of 
Paul in this single instant. It is but a clumsy way we 
have of dividing time by the revolution of the clock into 
minutes and hours, days and years, as if each portion so 
measured were of the same size as another of equal 
length. This may suit well enough for the common 
ends of life, but there are finer measurements for which 
it is quite misleading. The real size of any space of 
time is to be measured by the amount it contains of the 
soul's experience ; no one hour is exactly equal to an- 
other, and there are single hours which are larger than 
months. So measured, this one moment of Paul's life 
was perhaps larger than all his previous years. The 
glare of revelation was so intense that it might well have 
scorched the eye of reason or burnt out life itself, as the 
external light dazzled the eyes of his body into blindness. 

When his companions recovered themselves and 
turned to their leader, they discovered that he had lost 
his sight, and they had to take him by the hand and lead 
him into the city. What a change was there ! Instead 
of the proud Pharisee riding through the streets with the 
pomp of an inquisitor, a stricken man, trembling, gro- 
ping, clinging to the hand of his guide, arrives at the 
house of entertainment amidst the consternation of those 
who receive him and, getting hastily to a room where he 
can ask them to leave him alone, sinks down there in the 
darkness. 

46. But, though it was dark without, it was bright 
within. The blindness had been sent for the purpose of 



40 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

secluding him from outward distractions and enabling 
him to concentrate himself on the objects presented to 
the inner eye. For the same reason he neither ate nor 
drank for three days. He was too absorbed in the 
thoughts which crowded on him thick and fast. 

47. In these three days, it may be said with con- 
fidence, he got at least a partial hold of all the truths 
he afterward proclaimed to the world; for his whole 
theology is nothing but the explication of his own con- 
version. First of all, his whole previous life fell down 
in fragments at his feet. It had been of one piece, and 
wonderfully complete. It had appeared to himself to 
be a consistent deduction from the highest revelation he 
knew and, in spite of its imperfections, to lie in the line 
of the will of God. But, instead of this, it had been 
rushing in diametrical opposition against the will and 
revelation of God, and had now been brought to a stop 
and broken in pieces by the collision. That which had 
appeared to him the perfection of service and obedience 
had involved his soul in the guilt of blasphemy and inno- 
cent blood. Such had been the issue of seeking right- 
eousness by the works of the law. At the very moment 
when his righteousness seemed at last to be turning to 
the whiteness so long desired, it was caught in the blaze 
of this revelation and whirled away in shreds of shriveled 
blackness. It had been a mistake, then, from first to 
last. Righteousness was not to be obtained by the law, 
but only guilt and doom. This was the unmistakable 
conclusion, and it became the one pole of Paul's the- 
ology. 

48. But, while his theory of life thus fell in pieces 
with a crash that might by itself have shaken his reason, 
in the same moment an opposite experience befell him. 



HIS CONVERSION 41 

Not in wrath and vengeance did Jesus of Nazareth appear 
to him, as He might have been expected to appear to the 
deadly enemy of His cause. His first word might have 
been a demand for retribution, and His first might have 
been His last. But, instead of this, His face had been 
full of divine benignity and His words full of consider- 
ateness for His persecutor. In the very moment when 
the divine strength cast him down on the ground he felt 
himself encompassed by the divine love. This was the 
prize he had all his lifetime been struggling for in vain, 
and now he grasped it in the very moment in which he 
discovered that his struggles had been fightings against 
God ; he was lifted up from his fall in the arms of God's 
love ; he was reconciled and accepted forever. As time 
went on, he was more and more assured of this. In 
Christ he found without effort of his own the peace and 
the moral strength he had striven for in vain. And this 
became the other pole of his theology — that righteousness 
and strength are found in Christ without man's effort by 
mere trust in God's grace and acceptance of His gift. 
There were a hundred other things involved in these two 
which it required time to work out; but within these 
two poles the system of Paul's thinking ever afterward 
revolved. 

49. Effect on his Future. — The three dark days 
were not done before he knew one thing more — that his 
life was to be devoted to the proclamation of these dis- 
coveries. In any case this must have been. Paul was a 
born propagandist and could not have become the pos- 
sessor of such revolutionary truth without spreading it. 
Besides, he had a warm heart, that could be deeply moved 
with gratitude; and, when Jesus, whom he had blas- 
phemed and tried to blot out of the memory of the 



42 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

world, treated him with such divine benignity, giving 
him back his forfeited life and placing him in that posi- 
tion which had always appeared to him the prize of life, 
he could not but put himself at His service with all his 
powers. He was an ardent patriot, the hope of the 
Messiah having long occupied for him the whole horizon 
of the future ; and, when he knew that Jesus of Nazareth 
was the Messiah of his people and the Saviour of the 
world, it followed as a matter of course that he must 
spend his life in making this known. 

50. But this destiny was also clearly announced to 
him from the outside. Ananias, probably the leading 
man in the small Christian community at Damascus, was 
informed, in a vision, of the change which had happened 
to Paul, and was sent to restore his sight and admit him 
into the Christian Church by baptism. 

Nothing could be more beautiful than the way in 
which this servant of God approached the man who had 
come to the city to take his life. As soon as he learned 
the state of the case, he forgave and forgot all the crimes 
of his enemy and sprang to clasp him in the arms of 
Christian love. Certain as may have been the assurance 
which in the inner world of the mind Paul had in those 
three days received of forgiveness, it must have been to 
him a most welcome reassurance when, on opening his 
eyes again upon the external world, he was met with no 
contradiction of the visions he had been looking on, but 
the first object he saw was a human face bending over 
him with looks of forgiveness and perfect love. He 
learned from Ananias the future the Saviour had ap- 
pointed him: he had been apprehended by Christ in 
order to be a vessel to bear His name to Gentiles and 
kings and to the children of Israel. He accepted the 



HIS CONVERSION 43 

mission with limitless devotion ; and from that hour to 
the hour of his death he had but one ambition — to 
apprehend that for which he had been apprehended of 
Christ Jesus. 



CHAPTER IV 
HIS GOSPEL 



Paragraphs 51-67. 

51-53. SOJOURN IN ARABIA. 

54-58. FAILURE OF MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
56. Failure of the Gentiles. 57. Failure of the 
Jews. 58. The Fall the ultimate Cause of Failure. 

59-65. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. The New 
Adam. The New Man. 

66, 67. LEADING PECULIARITIES OF THE PAUL- 
INE GOSPEL. 

51. Sojourn in Arabia. — When a man has been 
suddenly converted, as Paul was, he is generally driven 
by a strong impulse to make known what has happened 
to him. Such testimony is very impressive; for it is 
that of a soul which is receiving its first glimpses of the 
realities of the unseen world, and there is a vividness 
about the report it gives of them which produces an irre- 
sistible sense of reality. Whether Paul yielded at once 
to this impulse or not we cannot say with certainty. 
The language of the book of Acts, where it is said that 
"straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues," 
would lead us to suppose so. But we learn from his own 
writings that there was another powerful impulse influ- 
encing him at the same time ; and it is uncertain which 
of the two he obeyed first. This other impulse was the 
wish to retreat into solitude and think out the meaning 
and issues of that which had befallen him. It cannot be 

44 



HIS GOSPEL 45 

wondered at that he felt this to be a necessity. He had 
believed his former creed intensely and staked everything 
on it ; to see it suddenly shattered in pieces must have 
shaken him severely. The new truth which had been 
flashed upon him was so far-reaching and revolutionary 
that it could not be taken in at once in all its bearings. 
Paul was a born thinker ; it was not enough for him to 
experience anything; he required to comprehend it and 
fit it into the structure of his convictions. 

Immediately, therefore, after his conversion he went 
away, he tells us, into Arabia. He does not, indeed, 
say for what purpose he went ; but, as there is no record 
of his preaching in that region and this statement occurs 
in the midst of a vehement defense of the originality of 
his gospel, we may conclude with considerable certainty 
that he went into retirement for the purpose of grasping 
in thought the details and the bearings of the revelation 
he had been put in possession of. In lonely contempla- 
tion he worked them out ; and, when he returned to man- 
kind, he was in possession of that view of Christianity 
which was peculiar to himself and formed the burden of 
his preaching during the subsequent years. 

52. There is some doubt as to the precise place of his 
retirement, because Arabia is a word of vague and vari- 
able significance. But most probably it denotes the 
Arabia of the Wanderings, the principal feature of which 
was Mount Sinai. This was a spot hallowed by great 
memories and by the presence of other great men of reve- 
lation. Here Moses had seen the burning bush and com- 
muned with God on the top of the mountain. Here 
Elijah had roamed in his season of despair and drunk 
anew at the wells of inspiration. What place could be 
more appropriate for the meditations of this successor of 



46 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

these men of God? In the valleys where the manna fell 
and under the shadows of the peaks which had burned 
beneath the feet of Jehovah he pondered the problem of 
his life. 

It is a great example. Originality in the preaching 
of the truth depends on the solitary intuition of it. 
Paul enjoyed the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost; 
but this did not render the concentrated activity of his 
own thinking unnecessary but only lent it peculiar inten- 
sity ; and the clearness and certainty of his gospel were 
due to these months of sequestered thought. His retire- 
ment may have lasted a year or more ; for between his 
conversion and his final departure from Damascus, to 
which he returned from Arabia, three years intervened ; 
and one of them at least was spent in this way. 

53. We have no detailed record of what the outlines 
of his gospel were till a period long subsequent to this ; 
but, as these, when first they are traceable, are a mere 
cast of the features of his conversion, and, as his mind 
was working so long and powerfully on the interpretation 
of that event at this period, there can be no doubt that 
the gospel sketched in the Epistles to the Romans and 
the Galatians was substantially the same as he preached 
from the first; and we are safe in inferring from these 
writings our account of his Arabian meditations. 

54. Failure of Man's Righteousness. — The start- 
ing-point of Paul's thinking was still, as it had been 
from his childhood, the conviction, inherited from pious 
generations, that the true end and felicity of man lay in 
the enjoyment of the favor of God. This was to be 
attained through righteousness ; only the righteous could 
God be at peace with and favor with His love. To 



HIS GOSPEL 47 

attain righteousness must, therefore, be the chief end of 
man. 

55. But man had failed to attain righteousness and 
nad thereby come short of the favor of God, and exposed 
himself to the divine wrath. Paul proves this by taking 
a vast survey of the history of mankind in pre-Christian 
times in its two great sections — the Gentile and the 
Jewish. 

56. The Gentiles failed. It might, indeed, be sup- 
posed that they had not the preliminary conditions for 
entering on the pursuit of righteousness at all, because 
they did not enjoy the advantage of a special revelation. 
But Paul holds that even the heathen know enough 
of God to be aware of the obligation to follow after 
righteousness. There is a natural revelation of God in 
His works and in the human conscience sufficient to en- 
lighten men as to this duty. But the heathen, instead 
of making use of this light, wantonly extinguished it. 
They were not willing to retain God in their knowledge 
and to fetter themselves with the restraints which a pure 
knowledge of Him imposed. They corrupted the idea 
of God in order to feel at ease in an immoral life. The 
revenge of nature came upon them in the darkening and 
confusion of their intellects. They fell into such insen- 
sate folly as to change the glorious and incorruptible 
nature of God into the images of men and beasts, birds 
and reptiles. This intellectual degeneracy was followed 
by still deeper moral degeneracy. God, when they for- 
sook Him, let them go ; and, when His restraining grace 
was removed, down they rushed into the depths of moral 
putridity. Lust and passion got the mastery of them, and 
their life became a mass of moral disease. In the end 
of the first chapter of Romans the features of their con- 



48 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

dition are sketched in colors that might be borrowed 
from the abode of devils, but were literally taken, as is 
too plainly proved by the pages even of Gentile histo- 
rians, from the condition of the cultured heathen nations 
at that time. This, then, was the history of one half of 
mankind: it had utterly fallen from righteousness and 
exposed itself to the wrath of God, which is revealed 
from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. 

57. The Jews were the other half of the world. 
Had they succeeded where the Gentiles had failed? 
They enjoyed, indeed, great advantages over the heathen ; 
for they possessed the oracles of God, in which the divine 
nature was exhibited in a form which rendered it inacces- 
sible to human perversion, and the divine law was written 
with equal plainness in the same form. But had they 
profited by these advantages? It is one thing to know 
the law and another thing to do it ; but it is doing, not 
knowing, which is righteousness. Had they, then, ful- 
filled the will of God, which they knew? 

Paul had lived in the same Jerusalem in which Jesus 
assailed the corruption and hypocrisy of scribes and 
Pharisees ; he had looked closely at the lives of the rep- 
resentative men of his nation ; and he does not hesitate 
to charge the Jews in mass with the very same sins as the 
Gentiles ; nay, he says that through them the name of 
God was blasphemed among the Gentiles. They boasted 
of their knowledge and were the bearers of the torch of 
truth, the fierce blaze of which exposed the sins of the 
heathen ; but their religion was a bitter criticism of the 
conduct of others ; they forgot to examine their own 
conduct by the same light ; and, while they were repeat- 
ing, Do not steal, Do not commit adultery, and a multi- 
tude of other commandments, they were indulging in 



HIS GOSPEL 49 

these sins themselves. What good in these circumstances 
did their knowledge do them? It only condemned them 
the more ; for their sin was against light. While the 
heathen knew so little that their sins were comparatively 
innocent, the sins of the Jews were conscious and pre- 
sumptuous. Their boasted superiority was therefore 
inferiority. They were more deeply condemned than 
the Gentiles they despised, and exposed to a heavier 
curse. 

58. The truth is, Gentiles and Jews had both failed 
for the same reason. Trace these two streams of human 
life back to their sources and you come at last to a point 
where they are not two streams but one ; and, before the 
bifurcation took place, something had happened which 
predetermined the failure of both. In Adam all fell, 
and from him all, both Gentiles and Jews, inherited a 
nature too weak for the arduous attainment of righteous- 
ness; human nature is carnal now, not spiritual, and, 
therefore, unequal to this supreme spiritual achievement. 

The law could not alter this; it had no creative 
power to make the carnal spiritual. On the contrary, 
it aggravated the evil. It actually multiplied offenses ; 
for its clear and full description of sins, which would 
have been an incomparable guide to a sound nature, 
turned into temptation for a morbid one. The very 
knowledge of sin tempts to its commission; the very 
command not to do anything is to a diseased nature a 
reason for doing it. This was the effect of the law : it 
multiplied and aggravated transgressions. And this was 
God's intention. Not that He was the author of sin ; 
but, like a skillful physician, who has sometimes to use 
appliances to bring a sore to a head before he heals it, 
He allowed the heathen to go their own way and gave 



50 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

the Jews the law, that the sin of human nature might 
exhibit all its inherent qualities, before He intervened 
to heal it. The healing, however, was His real purpose 
all the time : He concluded all under sin, that He might 
have mercy upon all. 

59. The Righteousness of God. — Man's extremity 
was God's opportunity; not, indeed, in the sense that, 
one way of salvation having failed, God devised another. 
The law had never, in His intention, been a way of sal- 
vation. It was only a means of illustrating the need of 
salvation. But the moment when this demonstration 
was complete was the signal for God to produce His 
method, which He had kept locked in His counsel 
through the generations of human probation. It had 
never been His intention to permit man to fail of his 
true end. Only He allowed time to prove that fallen 
man could never reach righteousness by his own efforts ; 
and, when the righteousness of man had been demon- 
strated to be a failure, He brought forth His secret — the 
righteousness of God. 

This was Christianity ; this was the sum and issue of 
the mission of Christ — the conferring upon man, as a 
free gift, of that which is indispensable to his blessedness, 
but which he had failed himself to attain. It is a divine 
act ; it is grace ; and man obtains it by acknowledging 
that he has failed himself to attain it and by accepting 
it from God; it is got by faith only. It is "the right- 
eousness of God, by the faith of Jesus Christ, unto all 
and upon all them that believe. ' ' 

60. Those who thus receive it enter at once into that 
position of peace and favor with God in which human 
felicity consists and which was the goal aimed at by 



HIS GOSPEL 51 

Paul when he was striving for righteousness by the law. 
"Being justified by faith, we have peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have 
access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and 
rejoice in hope of the glory of God." It is a sunny life 
of joy, peace and hope which those lead who have come 
to know this gospel. There may be trials in it ; but, 
when a man's life is reposing in the attainment of its 
true end, trials are light and all things work together for 
good. 

61. This righteousness of God is for all the children 
of men — not for the Jews only, but for the Gentiles also. 
The demonstration of man's inability to attain righteous- 
ness was made, in accordance with the divine purpose, in 
both sections of the human race ; and its completion was 
the signal for the exhibition of God's grace to both alike. 
The work of Christ was not for the children of Abraham, 
but for the children of Adam. "As in Adam all died, 
so in Christ shall all be made alive." The Gentiles did 
not need to undergo circumcision and to keep the law in 
order to obtain salvation ; for the law was no part of 
salvation ; it belonged entirely to the preliminary demon- 
stration of man's failure; and, when it had accomplished 
this service, it was ready to vanish away. The only 
human condition of obtaining God's righteousness is 
faith ; and this is as easy for Gentile as Jew. 

This was an inference from Paul's own experience. 
It was not as a Jew, but as a man, that he had been dealt 
with in his conversion. No Gentile could have been less 
entitled to obtain salvation by merit than he had been. 
So far from the law raising him a single step toward sal- 
vation, it had removed him to a greater distance from 
God than any Gentile, and cast him into a deeper con- 



52 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

demnation. How, then, could it profit the Gentiles to 
be placed in this position? In obtaining the righteous- 
ness in which he was now rejoicing he had done nothing 
which was not competent to any human being. 

62. It was this universal love of God revealed in the 
gospel which inspired Paul with unbounded admiration 
for Christianity. His sympathies had been cabined, 
cribbed, confined in a narrow conception of God; the 
new faith uncaged his heart and let it forth into the free 
and sunny air. God became a new God to him. He 
calls his discovery the mystery which had been hidden 
from ages and generations, but had been revealed to him 
and his fellow-apostles. It seemed to him to be the 
secret of the ages and to be destined to usher in a new 
era, far better than any the world had ever seen. What 
kings and prophets had not known had been revealed to 
him. It had burst on him like the dawn of a new 
creation. God was now offering to every man the 
supreme felicity of life — that righteousness which had 
been the vain endeavor of the past ages. 

63. This secret of the new epoch had not, indeed, 
been entirely unanticipated in the past. It had been 
''witnessed by the law and the prophets." The law 
could bear witness to it only negatively by demonstrating 
its necessity. But the prophets anticipated it more pos- 
itively. David, for example, described "the blessedness 
of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness with- 
out works. 1 ' Still more clearly had Abraham antici- 
pated it. He was a justified man ; and it was by faith, 
not by works, that He was justified — "he believed God, 
and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. ' ' The 
law had nothing to do with his justification, for it was 
not in existence for four centuries afterward. Nor had 



HIS GOSPEL 53 

circumcision anything to do with it, for he was justified 
before this rite was instituted. In short, it was as a 
man, not as a Jew, that he was dealt with by God, and 
God might deal with any human being in the same way. 
It had once made the thorny road of legal righteousness 
sacred to Paul to think that Abraham and the prophets 
had trodden it before him ; but now he knew that their 
life of religious joy and psalms of holy calm were in- 
spired by quite different experiences, which were now 
diffusing the peace of heaven through his heart also. 
But only the first streaks of dawn had been descried by 
them ; the perfect day had broken in his own time. 

64. The Old Adam and the New. — Paul's discovery 
of this way of salvation was an actual experience ; he 
simply knew that Christ, in the moment when He met 
him, had placed him in that position of peace and favor 
with God which he had long sighed for in vain, and, as 
time went on, he felt more and more that in this position 
he was enjoying the true blessedness of life. His mission 
henceforth must be to herald this discovery in its simple 
and concrete reality under the name of the Righteousness 
of God. But a mind like his could not help inquiring 
how it was that the possession of Christ did so much for 
him. In the Arabian wilderness he pondered over this 
question, and the gospel he subsequently preached con- 
tained a luminous answer to it. 

65. From Adam his children derive a sad double 
neritage — a debt of guilt, which they cannot reduce, 
but are constantly increasing, and a carnal nature, which 
is incapable of righteousness. These are the two features 
of the religious condition of fallen man, and they are 
the double source of all his woes. 



54 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

But Christ is a new Adam, a new head of humanity, 
and those who are connected with Him by faith become 
heirs of a double heritage of a precisely opposite kind. 
On the one hand, just as through our birth in the first 
Adam's line we get inevitably entangled in guilt, like a 
child born into a family which is drowned in debt, so 
through our birth in the line of the second Adam we get 
involved in a boundless heritage of merit, which Christ, 
as the Head of His family, makes the common property 
of its members. This extinguishes the debt of our guilt 
and makes us rich in Christ's righteousness. "As by one 
man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the 
obedience of one shall many be made righteous. ' ' On 
the other hand, just as Adam transmitted to his posterity 
a carnal nature, alien to God and unfit for righteousness, 
so the new Adam imparts to the race of which He is the 
Head a spiritual nature, akin to God and delighting in 
righteousness. 

The nature of man, according to Paul, normally con- 
sists of three sections — body, soul and spirit. In his 
original constitution these occupied definite relations of 
superiority and subordination to one another, the spirit 
being supreme, the body undermost, and the soul occu- 
pying the middle position. But the fall disarranged 
this order, and all sin consists in the usurpation by the 
body or the soul of the place of the spirit. In fallen 
man these two inferior sections of human nature, which 
together form what Paul calls the Flesh, or that side of 
human nature which looks toward the world and time, 
have taken possession of the throne and completely rule 
the life, while the spirit, the side of man which looks 
toward God and eternity, has been dethroned and re- 
duced to a condition of inefficiency and death. Christ 
restores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by 



HIS GOSPEL 55 

taking possession of it by his own Spirit. His Spirit 
dwells in the human spirit, vivifying it and sustaining it 
in such growing strength that it becomes more and more 
the sovereign part of the human constitution. The man 
ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual ; he is led by 
the Spirit of God and becomes more and more harmoni- 
ous with all that is holy and divine. 

The flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss 
of supremacy. It clogs and obstructs the spirit and fights 
to regain possession of the throne. Paul has described 
this struggle in sentences of terrible vividness, in which 
all generations of Christians have recognized the features 
of their deepest experience. But the issue of the struggle 
is not doubtful. Sin shall not again have dominion over 
those in whom Christ's Spirit dwells, or dislodge them 
from their standing in the favor of God. ' ' Neither death 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor 
things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, 
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from 
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ' ' 

66. The Pauline Gospel. — Such are the bare out- 
lines of the gospel which Paul brought back with him 
from the Arabian solitudes and afterward preached with 
unwearied enthusiasm. It could not but be mixed up in 
his mind and in his writings with the peculiarities of his 
own experience as a Jew, and these make it difficult for 
us to grasp his system in some of its details. The belief 
in which he was brought up, that no man could be saved 
without becoming a Jew, and the notions about the law 
from which he had to cut himself free, lie very distant 
from our modern sympathies ; yet his theology could not 
shape itself in his mind except in contrast to these mis- 
conceptions. This became subsequently still more inevit- 



56 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

able when his own old errors met him as the watchwords of 
a party within the Christian Church itself, against which 
he had to wage a long and relentless war. Though this 
conflict forced his views into the clearest expression, it 
encumbered them with references to feelings and beliefs 
which are now dead to the interest of mankind. But, 
in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul remains 
a possession of incalculable value to the human race. 
Its searching investigation of the failure and the wants 
of human nature, its wonderful unfolding of the wisdom 
of God in the education of the pre-Christian world, and 
its exhibition of the depth and universality of the divine 
love are among the profoundest elements of revelation. 

67. But it is in its conception of Christ that Paul's 
gospel wears its imperishable crown. The Evangelists 
sketched in a hundred traits of simple and affecting 
beauty the fashion of the earthly life of the man Christ 
Jesus, and in these the model of human conduct will 
always have to be sought ; but to Paul was reserved the 
task of making known, in its heights and depths, the 
work which the Son of God accomplished as the Saviour 
of the race. He scarcely ever refers to the incidents of 
Christ's earthly life, although here and there he betrays 
that he knew them well. To him Christ was ever the 
glorious Being, shining with the splendor of heaven, who 
appeared to him on the way to Damascus, and the Saviour 
who caught him up into the heavenly peace and joy of a 
new life. When the Church of Christ thinks of her 
Head as the deliverer of the soul from sin and death, as 
a spiritualizing presence ever with her and at work in 
every believer, and as the Lord over all things who will 
come again without sin unto salvation, it is in forms of 
thought given her by the Holy Ghost through the instru- 
mentality of this apostle. 



CHAPTER V 
THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER 



Paragraphs 68-78. 

68-70. Eight years of Comparative Inactivity at Tarsus. 

Gentiles admitted to Christian Church. 
71, 72. Paul discovered by Barnabas and brought to 

Antioch. His Work there. 
73-78. THE KNOWN WORLD OF THAT PERIOD. 

75. The Greeks; 76. The Romans; 77. The Jews; 

78. Barbarians and Slaves. 

68. Years of Inactivity. — Paul was now in pos- 
session of his gospel and was aware that it was to be the 
mission of his life to preach it to the Gentiles ; but he 
had still to wait a long time before his peculiar career 
commenced. We hear scarcely anything of him for 
seven or eight years; and yet we can only guess what 
may have been the reasons of Providence for imposing on 
His servant so long a time of waiting. 

69- There may have been personal reasons for it 
connected with Paul's own spiritual history; because 
waiting is a common instrument of providential disci- 
pline for those to whom exceptional work has been ap- 
pointed. A public reason may have been that he was 
too obnoxious to the Jewish authorities to be tolerated 
yet in those scenes where Christian activity commanded 
any notice. He had attempted to preach in Damascus, 
where his conversion had taken place, but was immedi- 

57 



58 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

ately forced to flee from the fury of the Jews ; and, going 
thence to Jerusalem and beginning to testify as a Chris- 
tian, he found the place in two or three weeks too hot to 
hold him. No wonder ; how could the Jews be expected 
to allow the man who had so lately been the chief cham- 
pion of their religion to preach the faith which they had 
employed him to destroy? When he fled from Jerusalem, 
he bent his steps to his native Tarsus, where for years he 
remained in obscurity. No doubt he testified for Christ 
there to his own family, and there are some indications 
that he carried on evangelistic operations in his native 
province of Cilicia : but, if he did so, his work may be 
said to have been that of a man in hiding, for it was not 
in the central or even in a visible stream of the new 
religious movement. 

70. These are but conjectural reasons for the obscu- 
rity of those years. But there was one undoubted reason 
for the delay of Paul's career of the greatest possible 
importance. In this interval took place that revolution 
— one of the most momentous in the history of mankind 
— by which the Gentiles were admitted to equal privileges 
with the Jews in the Church of Christ. This change 
proceeded from the original circle of apostles, in Jeru- 
salem, and Peter, the chief of the apostles, was the in- 
strument of it. By the vision of the sheet of clean and 
unclean beasts, which he saw at Joppa, he was prepared 
for the part he was to play in this transaction, and he 
admitted the Gentile Cornelius, of Caesarea, and his fam- 
ily to the Church by baptism without circumcision. This 
was an innovation involving boundless consequences. It 
was a necessary preliminary to Paul's mission- work, and 
subsequent events were to show how wise was the divine 
arrangement that the first Gentile entrants into the 



THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER 59 

Church should be admitted by the hands of Peter rather 
than by those of Paul. 

71. As soon as this event had taken place, the arena 
was clear for Paul's career, and a door was immediately 
opened for his entrance upon it. Almost simultaneously 
with the baptism of the Gentile family at Csesarea a great 
revival broke out among the Gentiles of the city of 
Antioch, the capital of Syria. The movement had been 
begun by fugitives driven by persecution from Jerusalem, 
and it was carried on with the sanction of the apostles, 
who sent Barnabas, one of their trusted coadjutors, from 
Jerusalem to superintend it. 

This man knew Paul. When Paul first came to 
Jerusalem after his conversion and assayed to join himself 
to the Christians there, they were all afraid of him, 
suspecting the teeth and claws of the wolf beneath the 
fleece of the sheep. But Barnabas rose superior to these 
fears and suspicions and, having taken the new convert 
and heard his story, believed in him and persuaded the 
rest to receive him. The intercourse thus begun only 
lasted a week or two at that time, as Paul had to leave 
Jerusalem ; but Barnabas had received a profound im- 
pression of his personality and did not forget him. 
When he was sent down to superintend the revival at 
Antioch, he soon found himself embarrassed with its 
magnitude and in need of assistance; and the idea 
occurred to him that Paul was the man he wanted. 
Tarsus was not far off, and thither he went to seek him. 
Paul accepted his invitation and returned with him to 
Antioch. 

72. The hour he had been waiting for had struck, 
and he threw himself into the work of evangelizing the 
Gentiles with the enthusiasm of a great nature that found 



60 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

itself at last in its proper sphere. The movement at once 
responded to the pressure of such a hand ; the disciples 
became so numerous and prominent that the heathen gave 
them a new name — that name of ''Christians," which has 
ever since continued to be the badge of faith in Christ — 
and Antioch, a city of half a million inhabitants, became 
the headquarters of Christianity instead of Jerusalem. 
Soon a large church was formed, and one of the mani- 
festations of the zeal with which it was pervaded was a 
proposal, which gradually shaped itself into an enthusi- 
astic resolution, to send forth a mission to the heathen. 
As a matter of course, Paul was designated for this service. 

73. The Known World of that Period. — As we see 
him thus brought at length face to face with the task of 
his life, let us pause to take a brief survey of the world 
which he was setting out to conquer. Nothing less was 
what he aimed at. In Paul's time the known world was 
so small a place, that it did not seem impossible even for 
a single man to make a spiritual conquest of it ; and it 
had been wonderfully prepared for the new force which 
was about to assail it. 

74. It consisted of a narrow disc of land surrounding 
the Mediterranean Sea. That sea deserved at that time 
the name it bears, for the world's center of gravity, which 
has since shifted to other latitudes, lay in it. The interest 
of human life was concentrated in the southern countries 
of Europe, the portion of western Asia and the strip of 
northern Africa which form its shores. In this little 
world there were three cities which divided between them 
the interest of those ages. These were Rome, Athens and 
Jerusalem, the capitals of the three races — the Romans, 
the Greeks and the Jews — which in every sense ruled that 
old world. It was not that each of them had mastered a 



THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER 61 

third part of the circle of civilization, but each of them 
had in turn diffused itself over the whole of it, and either 
still held its grip or at least had left imperishable traces 
of its presence. 

75. The Greeks were the first to take possession of 
the world. They were the people of cleverness and genius, 
the perfect masters of commerce, literature and art. In 
very early ages they displayed the instinct for coloniza- 
tion and sent forth their sons to find new abodes on the 
east and the west, far from their native home. At length 
there arose among them one who concentrated in himself 
the strongest tendencies of the race and by force of arms 
extended the dominion of Greece to the borders of India. 
The vast empire of Alexander the Great split into pieces 
at his death ; but a deposit of Greek life and influence 
remained in all the countries over which the deluge of 
his conquering armies had swept. Greek cities, such as 
Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt, flourished all 
over the East ; Greek merchants abounded in every center 
of trade ; Greek teachers taught the literature of their 
country in many lands ; and — what was most important 
of all — the Greek language became the general vehicle 
r pr the communication of the more serious thought 
between nation and nation. Even the Jews in New 
Testament times read their own Scriptures in a Greek 
version, the original Hebrew having become a dead 
language. Perhaps the Greek is the most perfect tongue 
the world has known, and there was a special providence 
in its universal diffusion before Christianity needed a 
medium of international communication. The New 
Testament was written in Greek, and, wherever the 
apostles of Christianity traveled, they were able to make 
themselves understood in this language. 



62 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

76. The turn of the Romans came next to obtain 
possession of the world. Originally a small clan in the 
neighborhood of the city from which they derived their 
name, they gradually extended and strengthened them- 
selves and acquired such skill in the arts of war and 
government that they became irresistible conquerors and 
marched forth in every direction to make themselves mas- 
ters of the globe. They subdued Greece itself and, flow- 
ing eastward, seized upon the countries which Alexander 
and his successors had ruled. The whole known world, 
indeed, became theirs from the Straits of Gibraltar to the 
utmost East. They did not possess the genius or genial- 
ity of the Greeks; their qualities were strength and 
justice ; and their arts were not those of the poet and the 
thinker, but those of the soldier and the judge. They 
broke down the divisions between the tribes of men and 
compelled them to be friendly toward each other, because 
they were all alike prostrate beneath one iron rule. They 
pierced the countries with roads, which connected them 
with Rome and were such solid triumphs of engineering 
skill that some of them remain to this day. Along these 
highways the message of the gospel ran. Thus the 
Romans also proved to be pioneers for Christianity, for 
their authority in so many countries afforded to its first 
publishers facility of movement and protection from the 
arbitrary justice of local tribunals. 

77. Meanwhile the third nation of antiquity had also 
completed its conquest of the world. Not by force of 
arms did the Jews diffuse themselves, as the Greeks and 
Romans had done. For centuries, indeed, they had 
dreamed of the coming of a warlike hero, whose prowess 
should outshine that of the most celebrated Gentile con- 
querors. But he never came : and their occupation of 



THE WORK AWAITING THE WORKER 63 

the centers of civilization had to take place in a more 
silent way. 

There is no change in the habits of any nation more 
striking than that which passed over the Jewish race in 
that interval of four centuries between Malachi and 
Matthew of which we have no record in the sacred Scrip- 
tures. In the Old Testament we see the Jews pent within 
the narrow limits of Palestine, engaged mainly in agri- 
cultural pursuits and jealously guarding themselves from 
intermingling with foreign nations. In the New Testa- 
ment we find them still, indeed, clinging with a desperate 
tenacity to Jerusalem and to the idea of their own sepa- 
rateness ; but their habits and abodes have been com- 
pletely changed: they have given up agriculture and 
betaken themselves with extraordinary eagerness and suc- 
cess to commerce ; and with this object in view they have 
diffused themselves everywhere — over Africa, Asia, 
Europe — and there is not a city of any importance where 
they are not to be found. By what steps this extraordi- 
nary change came about it were hard to tell and long to 
trace. But it had taken place ; and this turned out to 
be a circumstance of extreme importance for the early 
history of Christianity. 

Wherever the Jews were settled, they had their syna- 
gogues, their sacred Scriptures, their uncompromising 
belief in the One true God. Not only so : their syna- 
gogues everywhere attracted proselytes from the surround- 
ing Gentile populations. The heathen religions were at 
that period in a state of utter collapse. The smaller 
nations had lost faith in their deities, because they had 
not been able to defend them from the victorious Greeks 
and Romans. But the conquerors had for other reasons 
equally lost faith in their own gods. It was an age of 
skepticism, religious decay and moral corruption. But 



64 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

there are always natures which must possess a faith in 
which they can trust. These were in search of a religion, 
and many of them found refuge from the coarse and 
incredible myths of the gods of polytheism in the purity 
and monotheism of the Jewish creed. The fundamental 
ideas of this creed are also the foundations of the Chris- 
tian faith. Wherever the messengers of Christianity 
traveled, they met with people with whom they had many 
religious conceptions in common. Their first sermons 
were delivered in synagogues, their first converts were 
Jews and proselytes. The synagogue was the bridge by 
which Christianity crossed over to the heathen. 

78. Such, then, was the world which Paul was setting 
out to conquer. It was a world everywhere pervaded 
with these three influences. But there were two other 
elements of population which require to be kept in mind, 
as both of them supplied numerous converts to the early 
preachers: they were the original inhabitants of the 
various countries ; and there were the slaves, who were 
either captives taken in war or their descendants, and 
were liable to be shifted from place to place, being sold 
according to the necessities or caprices of their masters. 
A religion the chief boast of which it was to preach glad 
tidings to the poor could not neglect these down-trodden 
classes, and, although the conflict of Christianity with 
the forces of the time which had possession of the fate of 
the world naturally attracts attention, it must not be for- 
gotten that its best triumph has always consisted in the 
sweetening and brightening of the lot of the humble. 



CHAPTER VI 
HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 



Paragraphs 79-114. 

^79-88. THE FIRST JOURNEY. 

panions. 81. Cyprus. Change of his Name. 82-87. 
The Mainland of Asia Minor. 83. Desertion of Mark. 
84. Antioch-in-Pisidia and Iconium. 85-87. Lystra 
and Derbe. 88. Return. 

89-108. THE SECOND JOURNEY. 90, 91. Separa- 
tion from Barnabas. 92, 93. Unrecorded Half of 
the Journey. 94-96. Crossing to Europe. 97-108. 
Greece. 97-101. Macedonia. 99. Women and the 
Gospel. 100. Liberality of Churches. 102-108. 
Achaia. 103-105. Athens. 106-108. Corinth. 

109-114. THE THIRD JOURNEY. Ephesus, Po- 
lemic against Superstition. 



THE FIRST JOURNEY 

79. Paul's Companions. — From the beginning it 
had been the wont of the preachers of Christianity not to 
go alone on their expeditions, but two by two. Paul 
improved on this practise by going generally with two 
companions, one of them being a younger man, who 
perhaps took charge of the traveling arrangements. On 
his first journey his comrades were Barnabas and John 
Mark, the nephew of Barnabas. 

80. We have already seen that Barnabas may be 
called the discoverer of Paul ; and, when they set out on 
this journey together, he was probably in a position to 
act as Paul's patron ; for he enjoyed much consideration 

65 



66 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

in the Christian community. Converted apparently on 
the day of Pentecost, he had played a leading part in the 
subsequent events. He was a man of high social posi- 
tion, a landed proprietor in the island of Cyprus ; and he 
sacrificed all to the new movement into which he had been 
drawn. In the outburst of enthusiasm which led the first 
Christians to share their property with one another, he 
sold his estate and laid the money at the apostles' feet. 
He was constantly employed thereafter in the work of 
preaching, and he had so remarkable a gift of eloquence 
that he was called the Son of Exhortation. An incident 
which occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us a 
glimpse of the appearance of the two men. When the 
inhabitants of Lystra mistook them for gods, they called 
Barnabas Jupiter and Paul Mercury. Now, in ancient 
art Jupiter was always represented as a tall, majestic and 
benignant figure, while Mercury was the small, swift 
messenger of the father of gods and men. Probably it 
appeared, therefore, that the large, gracious, paternal 
Barnabas was the head and director of the expedition, 
while Paul, little and eager, was the subordinate. The 
direction in which they set out, too, was the one which 
Barnabas might naturally have been expected to choose. 
They went first to Cyprus, the island where his property 
had been and many of his friends still were. It lay 
eighty miles to the southwest of Seleucia, the seaport of 
Antioch, and they might reach it on the very day they 
left their headquarters. 

81. Cyprus — Change of Name. — But, although 
Barnabas appeared to be the leader, the good man 
probably knew already that the humble words of the 
Baptist might be used by himself with reference to his 
companion, "He must increase, but I must decrease." 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 67 

At all events, as soon as their work began in earnest, this 
was shown to be the relation between them. After going 
through the length of the island, from east to west, evan- 
gelizing, they arrived at Paphos, its chief town, and there 
the problems they had come out to face met them in the 
most concentrated form. 

Paphos was the seat of the worship of Venus, the god- 
dess of love, who was said to have been born of the foam 
of the sea at this very spot ; and her worship was carried 
on with the wildest licentiousness. It was a picture in 
miniature of Greece sunk in moral decay. Paphos was 
also the seat of the Roman government, and in the pro- 
consular chair sat a man, Sergius Paulus, whose noble 
character but utter lack of certain faith formed a com- 
panion picture of the inability of Rome at that epoch 
to meet the deepest necessities of her best sons. In the 
proconsular court, playing upon the inquirer's credulity, 
a Jewish sorcerer and quack, named Elymas, was flourish- 
ing, whose arts were a picture of the lowest depths to 
which the Jewish character could sink. The whole scene 
was a kind of miniature of the world the evils of which 
the missionaries had set forth to cure. 

In the presence of these exigencies Paul unfolded for 
the first time the mighty powers which lay in him. An 
access of the Spirit seizing him and enabling him to over- 
come all obstacles, he covered the Jewish magician with 
disgrace, converted the Roman governor, and founded in 
the town a Christian church in opposition to the Greek 
shrine. From that hour Barnabas sank into the second 
place and Paul took his natural position as the head of 
the mission. We no longer read, as heretofore, of 
' ' Barnabas and Saul, ' ' but always of ' ' Paul and Barna- 
bas. ' ' The subordinate had become the leader ; and, as 
if to mark that he had become a new man and taken a 



68 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

new place, he was no longer called by the Jewish name 
of Saul, which up to this point he had borne, but by the 
name of Paul, which has ever since been his designation 
among Christians. 

82. The Mainland of Asia. — The next move was as 
obviously the choice of the new leader as the first one had 
been due to Barnabas. They struck across the sea to 
Perga, a town near the middle of the southern coast of 
Asia Minor, then right up, a hundred miles, into the 
mainland, and thence eastward to a point almost straight 
north of Tarsus. This route carried them in a kind of 
half circuit through the districts of Pamphylia, Pisidia 
and Lycaonia, which border, to the west and north, on 
Cilicia, Paul's native province ; so that, if it be the case 
that he had evangelized Cilicia already, he was now 
merely extending his labors to the nearest surrounding 
regions. 

83. At Perga, the starting-point of this second half 
of the journey, a misfortune befell the expedition: John 
Mark deserted his companions and sailed for home. It 
may be that the new position assumed by Paul had given 
him offense, though his generous uncle felt no such grudge 
at that which was the ordinance of nature and of God. 
But it is more likely that the cause of his withdrawal was 
dismay at the dangers upon which they were about to 
enter. These were such as might well strike terror even 
into resolute hearts. Behind Perga rose the snow-clad 
peaks of the Taurus Mountains, which had to be pene- 
trated through narrow passes, where crazy bridges spanned 
the rushing torrents, and the castles of robbers, who 
watched for passing travelers to pounce upon, were hid- 
den in positions so inaccessible that even the Roman arms 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 69 

had not been able to exterminate them. When these 
preliminary dangers were surmounted, the prospect be- 
yond was anything but inviting : the country to the north 
of the Taurus was a vast tableland, more elevated than 
the summits of the highest mountains in this country, 
and scattered over with solitary lakes, irregular mountain 
masses and tracts of desert, where the population was rude 
and spoke an almost endless variety of dialects. These 
things terrified Mark, and he drew back. But his com- 
panions took their lives in their hand and went forward. 
To them it was enough that there were multitudes of 
perishing souls there, needing the salvation of which they 
were the heralds ; and Paul knew that there were scat- 
tered handfuls of his own people in these remote regions 
of the heathen. 

84. Can we conceive what their procedure was like in 
the towns they visited ? It is difficult, indeed, to picture 
it to ourselves. As we try to see them with the mind's 
eye entering any place, we naturally think of them as the 
most important personages in it ; to us their entry is as 
august as if they had been carried on a car of victory. 
Very different, however, was the reality. They entered 
a town as quietly and as unnoticed as any two strangers 
who may walk into one of our towns any morning. Their 
first care was to get a lodging ; and then they had to seek 
for employment, for they worked at their trade wherever 
they went. Nothing could be more commonplace. Who 
could dream that this travel-stained man, going from one 
tentmaker's door to another, seeking for work, was carry- 
ing the future of the world beneath his robe ! 

When the Sabbath came round, they would cease from 
toil, like the other Jews in the place, and repair to the 
synagogue. They joined in the psalms and prayers with 



70 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

the other worshipers and listened to the reading of the 
Scriptures. After this the presiding elder might ask if 
any one present had a word of exhortation to deliver. 
This was Paul's opportunity. He would rise and, with 
outstretched hand, begin to speak. At once the audience 
recognized the accents of the cultivated rabbi : and the 
strange voice won their attention. Taking up the pas- 
sages which had been read, he would soon be moving 
forward on the stream of Jewish history, till he led up to 
the astounding announcement that the Messiah hoped for 
by their fathers and promised by their prophets had come ; 
and he had been sent among them as His apostle. Then 
would follow the story of Jesus ; it was true, He had been 
rejected by the authorities of Jerusalem and crucified, 
but this could be shown to have taken place in accordance 
with prophecy ; and His resurrection from the dead was 
an infallible proof that He had been sent of God : now 
He was exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance 
unto Israel and the remission of sins. 

We can easily imagine the sensation produced by such 
a sermon from such a preacher and the buzz of conversa- 
tion which would arise among the congregation after the 
dismissal of the synagogue. During the week it would 
become the talk of the town : and Paul was willing to 
converse at his work or in the leisure of the evening with 
any who might desire further information. Next Sabbath 
the synagogue would be crowded, not with Jews only, 
but Gentiles also, who were curious to see the strangers ; 
and Paul now unfolded the secret that salvation by Jesus 
Christ was as free to Gentiles as to Jews. This was gener- 
ally the signal for the Jews to contradict and blaspheme ; 
and, turning his back on them, Paul addressed himself to 
the Gentiles. But meantime the fanaticism of the Jews 
was roused, who either stirred up the mob or secured the 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 71 

interest of the authorities against the strangers ; and in a 
storm of popular tumult or by the breath of authority the 
messengers of the gospel were swept out of the town. 
This was what happened at Antioch in Pisidia. their first 
halting-place in the interior of Asia Minor ; and it was 
repeated in a hundred instances in Paul's subsequent 
life. 

85. Sometimes they did not get off so easily. At 
Lystra, for example, they found themselves in a popula- 
tion of rude heathens, who were at first so charmed with 
Paul's winning words and impressed with the appearance 
of the preachers that they took them for gods and were 
on the point of offering sacrifice to them. This filled 
the missionaries with horror, and they rejected the inten- 
tions of the crowd with unceremonious haste. A sudden 
revolution in the popular sentiment ensued, and Paul was 
stoned and cast out of the city apparently dead. 

86. Such were the scenes of excitement and peril 
through which they had to pass in this remote region. 
But their enthusiasm never flagged ; they never thought 
of turning back, but, when they were driven out of one 
city, moved forward to another. And, total as their 
discomfitures sometimes appeared, they quitted no city 
without leaving behind them a little band of converts — 
perhaps a few Jews, a few more proselytes, and a number 
of Gentiles. The gospel found those for whom it was 
intended — penitents burdened with sin, souls dissatisfied 
with the world and their ancestral religion, hearts yearn- 
ing for divine sympathy and love; "as many as were 
ordained to eternal life believed;" and these formed in 
every city the nucleus of a Christian church. Even at 
Lystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of 
faithful hearts gathered round the mangled body of the 



72 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

apostle outside the city gates; Eunice and Lois were 
there with tender womanly ministrations; and young 
Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding 
face, felt his heart forever knit to the hero who had cour- 
age to suffer to the death for his faith. 

87. In the intense love of such hearts Paul received 
compensation for suffering and injustice. If, as some 
suppose, the people of this region formed part of the 
Galatian churches, we see from his Epistle to them the 
kind of love they gave him. They received him, he says, 
as an angel of God, nay, as Jesus Christ Himself ; they 
were ready to have plucked out their eyes and given them 
to him. They were people of rude kindness and headlong 
impulses ; their native religion was one of excitement and 
demonstrativeness, and they carried these characteristics 
into the new faith they had adopted. They were filled 
with joy and the Holy Ghost, and the revival spread on 
every hand with great rapidity, till the word, sounding 
out from the little Christian communities, was heard all 
along the slopes of Taurus and down the glens of the 
Cestrus and Halys. 

Paul's warm heart could not but enjoy such an out- 
burst of affection. He responded to it by giving in 
return his own deep love. The towns mentioned in their 
itinerary are the Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and 
Derbe ; but, when at the last of them he had finished his 
course and the way lay open to him to descend by the 
Cilician Gates to Tarsus and thence get back to Antioch, 
he preferred to return by the way he had come. In spite 
of the most imminent danger he revisited all these places, 
to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face of 
persecution ; and he ordained elders in every city to watch 
over the churches in his absence. 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 73 

88. The Return. — At length the missionaries de- 
scended again from these uplands to the southern coast 
and sailed back to Antioch, from which they had set out. 
Worn with toil and suffering, but flushed with the joy of 
success, they appeared among those who had sent them 
forth and had doubtless been following them with their 
prayers; and, like discoverers returned from the finding 
of a new country, they related the miracles of grace they 
had witnessed in the strange world of the heathen. 

THE SECOND JOURNEY 

89- In his first journey Paul may be said to have 
been only trying his wings ; for his course, adventurous 
though it was, only swept in a limited circle round his 
native province. In his second journey he performed a 
far more distant and perilous flight. Indeed, this jour- 
ney was not only the greatest he achieved but perhaps 
the most momentous recorded in the annals of the human 
race. In its issues it far outrivaled the expedition of 
Alexander the Great, when he carried the arms and 
civilization of Greece into the heart of Asia, or that of 
Caesar, when he landed on the shores of Britain, or even 
the voyage of Columbus, when he discovered a new world. 
Yet, when he set out on it, he had no idea of the magni- 
tude which it was to assume or even the direction which 
it was to take. After enjoying a short rest at the close 
of the first journey, he said to his fellow-missionary, 
"Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city 
where we have preached the word of the Lord and see 
how they do. ' ' It was the parental longing to see his 
spiritual children which was drawing him ; but God had 
far more extensiveMesigns, which opened up before him 
as he went forward. 



74 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

90. Separation from Barnabas. — Unfortunately 
the beginning of this journey was marred by a dispute 
between the two friends who meant to perform it together. 
The occasion of their difference was the offer of John 
Mark to accompany them. No doubt when this young 
man saw Paul and Barnabas returning safe and sound 
from the undertaking which he had deserted, he recog- 
nized what a mistake he had made ; and he now wished 
to retrieve his error by rejoining them. Barnabas natur- 
ally wished to take his nephew, but Paul absolutely 
refused. The one missionary, a man of easy kindliness, 
urged the duty of forgiveness and the effect which a rebuff 
might have on a beginner ; while the other, full of zeal 
for God, represented the danger of making so sacred a 
work in any way dependent on one who could not be 
relied upon, for ' ' confidence in an unfaithful man in time 
of trouble is like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint.' 1 

We cannot now tell which of them was in the right 
or if both were partly wrong. Both of them, at all 
events, suffered for it: Paul had to part in anger from 
the man to whom he probably owed more than to any 
other human being ; and Barnabas was separated from 
the grandest spirit of the age. 

91. They never met again. This was not due, how- 
ever, to an unchristian continuation of the quarrel ; for 
the heat of passion soon cooled down and the old love 
returned. Paul mentions Barnabas with honor in his 
writings, and in the very last of his Epistles he sends for 
Mark to come to him at Rome, expressly adding that he 
is profitable to him for ministry — the very thing he had 
disbelieved about him before. In the meantime, how- 
ever, their difference separated them. They agreed to 
divide between them the region they had evangelized 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 75 

together. Barnabas and Mark went away to Cyprus; 
and Paul undertook to visit the churches on the main- 
land. As companion he took with him Silas, or Silvanus, 
in the place of Barnabas ; and he had not proceeded far 
on his new journey when he met with one to take the 
place of Mark. This was Timothy, a convert he had 
made at Lystra in his first journey; he was youthful and 
gentle ; and he continued a faithful companion and a 
constant comfort to the apostle to the end of his life. 

92. Unrecorded Work. — In pursuance of the purpose 
with which he had set out, Paul began this journey by 
revisiting the churches in the founding of which he had 
taken part. Beginning at Antioch and proceeding in a 
northwesterly direction, he did this work in Syria, Cilicia 
and other parts, till he reached the center of Asia Minor, 
where the primary object of his journey was completed. 
But, when a man is on the right road, all sorts of oppor- 
tunities open up before him. When he had passed 
through the provinces which he had visited before, new 
desires to penetrate still farther began to fire his mind, 
and Providence opened up the way. 

He still went forward in the same direction through 
Phrygia and Galatia. Bithynia, a large province lying 
along the shore of the Black Sea, and Asia, a densely 
populated province in the west of Asia Minor, seemed to 
invite him and he wished to enter them. But the Spirit 
who guided his footsteps indicated, by some means un- 
known to us, that these provinces were shut to him in the 
meantime ; and, pushing onward in the direction in which 
his divine Guide permitted him to go, he found himself 
at Troas, a town on the northwest coast of Asia Minor. 

93. Thus he had traveled from Antioch in the south- 



76 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

east to Troas in the northwest of Asia Minor, a distance 
as far as from Land's End to John o' Groat's, evangel- 
izing all the way. It must have taken months, perhaps 
even years. Yet of this long, laborious period we possess 
no details whatever, except such features of his intercourse 
with the Galatians as may be gathered from the Epistle 
to that church. The truth is that, thrilling as are the 
notices of Paul's career given in the Acts, this record is 
a very meager and imperfect one, and his life was far 
fuller of adventure, of labors and sufferings for Christ, 
than even Luke's narrative would lead us to suppose. 
The plan of the Acts is to tell only what was most novel 
and characteristic in each journey, while it passes over, 
for instance, all his repeated visits to the same scenes. 
There are thus great blanks in the history, which were 
in reality as full of interest as the portions of his life 
which are fully described. 

Of this there is a startling proof in an Epistle which 
he wrote within the period covered by the Acts of the 
Apostles. His argument calling upon him to enumerate 
some of his outstanding adventures, ''Are they ministers 
of Christ?" he asks, "I am more; in labors more abun- 
dant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, 
in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty 
stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods. Once 
was I stoned. Thrice I suffered shipwreck. A night 
and a day have I been in the deep. In journeyings 
often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by 
mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils 
in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the 
sea, in perils among false brethren ; in weariness and 
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in 
fastings often, in cold and nakedness. ' ' 

Now, of the items of this extraordinary catalogue 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 77 

the book of Acts mentions very few : of the five Jewish 
scourgings it notices not one, of the three Roman beat- 
ings only one ; the one stoning it records, but not one of 
the three shipwrecks, for the shipwreck so fully detailed 
in the Acts happened later. It was no part of the design 
of Luke to exaggerate the figure of the hero he was paint- 
ing ; his brief and modest narrative comes far short even 
of the reality ; and, as we pass over the few simple words 
into which he condenses the story of months or years, our 
imagination requires to be busy, filling up the outline 
with toils and pains at least equal to those the memory 
of which he has preserved. 

94. Crossing to Europe.— It would appear that 
Paul reached Troas under the direction of the guiding 
Spirit without being aware whither his steps were next 
to be turned. But could he doubt what the divine in- 
tention was when, gazing across the silver streak of the 
Hellespont, he beheld the shores of Europe on the other 
side? He was now within the charmed circle where for 
ages civilization had had her home ; and he could not be 
entirely ignorant of those stories of war and enterprise 
and those legends of love and valor which have made it 
forever bright and dear to the heart of mankind. 

At only four miles' distance lay the Plain of Troy, 
where Europe and Asia encountered each other in the 
struggle celebrated in Homer's immortal song. Not far 
off Xerxes, sitting on a marble throne, reviewed the three 
millions of Asiatics with which he meant to bring Europe 
to his feet. On the other side of that narrow strait lay 
Greece and Rome, the centers from which issued the 
learning, the commerce and the armies which governed 
the world. Could his heart, so ambitious for the glory 
of Christ, fail to be fired with the desire to cast himself 



78 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

upon these strongholds, or could he doubt that the Spirit 
was leading him forward to this enterprise? He knew 
that Greece, with all her wisdom, lacked that knowledge 
which makes wise unto salvation, and that the Romans, 
though they were the conquerors of this world, did not 
know the way of winning an inheritance in the world 
that is to come ; but in his breast he carried the secret 
which they both required. 

95. It may have been such thoughts, dimly moving 
in his mind, that projected themselves into the vision 
which he saw at Troas ; or was it the vision which first 
awakened the idea of crossing to Europe? As he lay 
asleep, with the murmur of the JEgean in his ears, he saw 
a man standing on the opposite coast, on which he had 
been looking before he went to rest, beckoning and cry- 
ing, "Come over into Macedonia and help us." That 
figure represented Europe, and its cry for help Europe's 
need of Christ. Paul recognized in it a divine summons ; 
and the very next sunset which bathed the Hellespont in 
its golden light shone upon his figure seated on the deck 
of a ship the prow of which was moving toward the 
shore of Macedonia. 

96. In this passage of Paul, from Asia to Europe, a 
great providential decision was taking effect, of which, 
as children of the West, we cannot think without the 
profoundest thankfulness. Christianity arose in Asia 
and among an Oriental people ; and it might have been 
expected to spread first among those races to which the 
Jews were most akin. Instead of coming west, it might 
have gone eastward. It might have penetrated into 
Arabia and taken possession of those regions where the 
faith of the False Prophet now holds sway. It might 
have visited the wandering tribes of Central Asia and, 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 79 

piercing its way down through the passes of the Hima- 
layas, reared its temples on the banks of the Ganges, the 
Indus and the Godavery. It might have traveled farther 
east to deliver the swarming millions of China from the 
cold secularism of Confucius. Had it done so, mission- 
aries from India and Japan might have been coming to 
England and America at the present day to tell the 
story of the Cross. But Providence conferred on Europe 
a blessed priority, and the fate of our continent was de- 
cided when Paul crossed the JEgea.n. 

97. Macedonia. — As Greece lay nearer than Rome 
to the shore of Asia, its conquest for Christ was the great 
achievement of his second missionary journey. Like the 
rest of the world it was at that time under the sway of 
Rome, and the Romans had divided it into two provinces 
— Macedonia in the north and Achaia in the south. 
Macedonia was, therefore, the first scene of Paul's Greek 
mission. It was traversed from east to west by a great 
Roman road, along which the missionary moved, and the 
places where we have accounts of his labors are Philippi, 
Thessalonica and Beroea. 

98. The Greek character in this northern province 
was much less corrupted than in the more polished society 
to the south. In the Macedonian population there still 
lingered something of the vigor and courage which four 
centuries before had made its soldiers the conquerors of 
the world. The churches which Paul founded here gave 
him more comfort than any he established elsewhere. 
There are none of his Epistles more cheerful and cordial 
than those to the Thessalonians and the Philippians; 
and, as he wrote the latter late in life, the perseverance 
of the Macedonians in adhering to the gospel must have 



80 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

been as remarkable as the welcome they gave it at the 
first. At Bercea he even met with a generous and open- 
minded synagogue of Jews — the rarest occurrence in his 
experience. 

99. Women and the Gospel. — A prominent feature 
of the work in Macedonia was the part taken in it by 
women. Amid the general decay of religions through- 
out the world at this period, many women everywhere 
sought satisfaction for their religious instincts in the 
pure faith of the synagogue. In Macedonia, perhaps 
on account of its sound morality, these female proselytes 
were more numerous than elsewhere ; and they pressed in 
large numbers into the Christian Church. This was a 
good omen ; it was a prophecy of the happy change in 
the lot of women which Christianity was to produce in 
the nations of the West. If man owes much to Christ, 
woman owes still more. He has delivered her from the 
degradation of being man's slave and plaything and 
raised her to be his friend and his equal before Heaven ; 
while, on the other hand, a new glory has been added to 
Christ's religion by the fineness and dignity with which 
it is invested when embodied in the female character. 

These things were vividly illustrated in the earliest 
footsteps of Christianity on our continent. The first 
convert in Europe was a woman, at the first Christian 
service held on European soil the heart of Lydia being 
opened to receive the truth ; and the change which passed 
upon her prefigured what woman in Europe was to be- 
come under the influence of Christianity. In the same 
town of Philippi there was seen, too, at the same time an 
equally representative image of the condition of woman 
in Europe before the gospel reached it, in a poor girl, 
possessed of a spirit of divination and held in slavery by 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 81 

men who were making gain out of her misfortune, whom 
Paul restored to sanity. Her misery and degradation 
were a symbol of the disfiguration, as Lydia's sweet and 
benevolent Christian character was of the transfiguration 
of womanhood. V 

100. Liberality of the Churches. — Another feature 
which prominently marked the Macedonian churches was 
a spirit of liberality. They insisted on supplying the 
bodily wants of the missionaries ; and, even after Paul 
had left them, they sent gifts to meet his necessities in 
other towns. Long afterward, when he was a prisoner 
at Rome, they deputed Epaphroditus, one of their teach- 
ers, to carry thither similar gifts to him and to act as his 
attendant. Paul accepted the generosity of these loyal 
hearts, though in other places he would work his fingers 
to the bone and forego his natural rest rather than accept 
similar favors. Nor was their willingness to give due 
to superior wealth. On the contrary, they gave out of 
deep poverty. They were poor to begin with, and they 
were made poorer by the persecutions which they had to 
endure. These were very severe after Paul left, and they 
lasted long. Of course they had broken first of all on 
Paul himself. Though he was so successful in Macedo- 
nia, he was swept out of every town at last like the off- 
scourings of all things. It was generally by the Jews 
that this was brought about. They either fanaticized 
the mob against him, or accused him before the Roman 
authorities of introducing a new religion or disturbing 
the peace or proclaiming a king who would be a rival to 
Caesar. They would neither go into the kingdom of 
heaven themselves nor suffer others to enter. 

101. But God protected His servant. At Philippi 



82 THE LIFE OF ST. PAXIL 

He delivered him from prison by a physical miracle and 
by a miracle of grace still more marvelous wrought upon 
his cruel jailor; and in other towns He saved him by 
more natural means. In spite of bitter opposition, 
churches were founded in city after city, and from these 
the glad tidings sounded out over the whole province of 
Macedonia. 

102. Achaia. — When, leaving Macedonia, Paul pro- 
ceeded south into Achaia, he entered the real Greece — 
the paradise of genius and renown. The memorials of 
the country's greatness rose around him on his journey. 
As he quitted Bercea, he could see behind him the snowy 
peaks of Mount Olympus, where the deities of Greece 
had been supposed to dwell. Soon he was sailing past 
Thermopylae, where the immortal Three Hundred stood 
against the barbarian myriads ; and, as his voyage neared 
its close, he saw before him the island of Salamis, where 
again the existence of Greece was saved from extinction 
by the valor of her sons. 

103. Athens. — His destination was Athens, the cap- 
ital of the country. As he entered the city, he could not 
be insensible to the great memories which clung to its 
streets and monuments. Here the human mind had 
blazed forth with a splendor it has never exhibited else- 
where. In the golden age of its history Athens possessed 
more men of the very highest genius than have ever lived 
in any other city. To this day their names invest it 
with glory. Yet even in Paul's day the living Athens 
was a thing of the past. Four hundred years had elapsed 
since its golden age, and in the course of these centuries 
it had experienced a sad decline. Philosophy had de- 
generated into sophistry, art into dilettanteism, oratory 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 83 

into rhetoric, poetry into versemaking. It was a city 
living on its past. Yet it still had a great name and 
was full of culture and learning of a kind. It swarmed 
with so-called philosophers of different schools, and with 
teachers and professors of every variety of knowledge; 
and thousands of strangers of the wealthy class, collected 
from all parts of the world, lived there for study or the 
gratification of their intellectual tastes. It still repre- 
sented to an intelligent visitor one of the great factors in 
the life of the world. 

104. With the amazing versatility which enabled him 
to be all things to all men, Paul adapted himself to this 
population also. In the market-place, the lounge of the 
learned, he entered into conversation with students and 
philosophers, as Socrates had been wont to do on the same 
spot five centuries before. But he found even less appe- 
tite for the truth than the wisest of the Greeks had met 
with. Instead of the love of truth an insatiable intellec- 
tual curiosity possessed the inhabitants. This made them 
willing enough to tolerate the advances of any one bring- 
ing before them a new doctrine ; and, as long as Paul 
was merely developing the speculative part of his mes- 
sage, they listened to him with pleasure. Their interest 
seemed to deepen, and at last a multitude of them con- 
veyed him to Mars' Hill, in the very center of the splen- 
dors of their city, and requested a full statement of his 
faith. He complied with their wishes and in the mag- 
nificent speech he there made them, gratified their pecul- 
iar tastes to the full, as in sentences of the noblest 
eloquence he unfolded the great truths of the unity of 
God and the unity of man, which lie at the foundation 
of Christianity. But, when he advanced from these pre- 
liminaries to touch the consciences of his audience and 



84 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

address them about their own salvation, they departed in 
a body and left him talking. 

105. He quitted Athens and never returned to it. 
Nowhere else had he so completely failed. He had been 
accustomed to endure the most violent persecution and to 
rally from it with a light heart. But there is something 
worse than persecution to a fiery faith like his, and he 
had to encounter it here : his message roused neither in- 
terest nor opposition. The Athenians never thought of 
persecuting him ; they simply did not care what the bab- 
bler said ; and this cold disdain cut him more deeply 
than the stones of the mob or the lictors' rods. Never 
perhaps was he so much depressed. When he left Athens, 
he moved on to Corinth, the other great city of Achaia ; 
and he tells us himself that he arrived there in weakness 
and in fear and in much trembling. 

106. Corinth. — There was in Corinth enough of the 
spirit of Athens to prevent these feelings from being 
easily assuaged. Corinth was to Athens very much 
what Glasgow is to Edinburgh. The one was the com- 
mercial, the other the intellectual capital of the country. 
Even the situations of the two places in Greece resembled 
in some respects those of these two cities in Scotland. 
But the Corinthians also were full of disputatious curios- 
ity and intellectual hauteur. Paul dreaded the same 
kind of reception as he had met with in Athens. Could 
it be that these were people for whom the gospel had no 
message? This was the staggering question which was 
making him tremble. There seemed to be nothing in 
them on which the gospel could take hold : they appeared 
to feel no wants which it could satisfy. 

107. There were other elements of discouragement in 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 85 

Corinth. It was the Paris of ancient times — a city rich 
and luxurious, wholly abandoned to sensuality. Vice 
displayed itself without shame in forms which struck 
deadly despair into Paul's pure Jewish mind. Could 
men be rescued from the grasp of such monstrous vices? 
Besides, the opposition of the Jews rose here to unusual 
virulence. He was compelled at length to depart from 
the synagogue altogether, and did so with expressions of 
strong feeling. Was the soldier of Christ going to be 
driven off the field and forced to confess that the gospel 
was not suited for cultured Greece? It looked like it. 

108. But the tide turned. At the critical moment 
Paul was visited with one of those visions which were 
wont to be vouchsafed to him at the most trying and 
decisive crises of his history. The Lord appeared to him 
in the night, saying, ' ' Be not afraid, but speak, and hold 
not thy peace ; for I am with thee, and no man shall set 
on thee to hurt thee ; for I have much people in this 
city. ' ' The apostle took courage again, and the causes 
of discouragement began to clear away. The opposition 
of the Jews was broken, when they hurried him with mob 
violence before the Roman governor, Gallio, but were 
dismissed from the tribunal with ignominy and disdain. 
The very president of the synagogue became a Christian, 
and conversions multiplied among the native Corinthians. 
Paul enjoyed the solace of living under the roof of two 
leal-hearted friends of his own race and his own occupa- 
tion, Aquila and Priscilla. He remained a year and a 
half in the city and founded one of the most interesting 
of his churches, thus planting the standard of the cross in 
Achaia also and proving that the gospel was the power of 
God unto salvation even in the headquarters of the 
world's wisdom. 



86 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 



THE THIRD JOURNEY 

109. It must have been a thrilling story Paul had to 
tell at Jerusalem and Antioch when he returned from his 
second journey; but he had no disposition to rest on his 
laurels, and it was not long before he set out on his third 
journey. 

110. In Asia. — It might have been expected that, 
having in his second journey planted the gospel in 
Greece, he would in his third have made Rome his prin- 
cipal aim. But, if the map be referred to, it will be 
observed that, in the midst, between the regions of Asia 
Minor which he evangelized during his first journey and 
the provinces of Greece in which he planted churches in 
his second journey, there was a hiatus — the populous 
province of Asia, in the west of Asia Minor. It was on 
this region that he descended in his third journey. Stay- 
ing for no less than three years in Ephesus, its capital, 
he effectively filled up the gap and connected together the 
conquests of his former campaigns. This journey in- 
cluded, indeed, at its beginning, a visitation of all the 
churches formerly founded in Asia Minor and, at its 
close, a flying visit to the churches of Greece ; but, true 
to his plan of dwelling only on what was new in each 
journey, the author of the Acts has supplied us only with 
the details relating to Ephesus. 

111. Ephesus. — This city was at that time the 
Liverpool of the Mediterranean. It possessed a splendid 
harbor, in which was concentrated the traffic of the sea 
which was then the highway of the nations; and, as 
Liverpool has behind her the great towns of Lancashire, 
so had Ephesus behind and around her such cities as 



HIS MISSIONARY TRAVELS 87 

those mentioned along with her in the epistles to the 
churches in the book of Revelation — Smyrna, Pergamos, 
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. It was a 
city of vast wealth, and it was given over to every kind 
of pleasure, the fame of its theater and race-course being 
world-wide. 

112. But Ephesus was still more famous as a sacred 
city. It was a seat of the worship of the goddess Diana, 
whose temple was one of the most celebrated shrines of 
the ancient world. This temple was enormously rich 
and harbored great numbers of priests. At certain 
seasons of the year it was a resort for flocks of pilgrims 
from the surrounding regions; and the inhabitants of 
the town flourished by ministering in various ways to 
this superstition. The goldsmiths drove a trade in little 
silver models of the image of the goddess which the 
temple contained and which was said to have fallen from 
heaven. Copies of the mystic characters engraven on this 
ancient relic were sold as charms. The city swarmed 
with wizards, fortune-tellers, interpreters of dreams and 
other gentry of the like kind, who traded on the mari- 
ners, merchants and pilgrims who frequented the port. 

113. Paul's work had therefore to assume the form 
of a polemic against superstition. He wrought such 
astonishing miracles in the name of Jesus that some of 
the Jewish palterers with the invisible world attempted 
to cast out devils by invoking the same name ; but the 
attempt issued in their signal discomfiture. Other pro- 
fessors of magical arts were converted to the Christian 
faith and burnt their books. The vendors of supersti- 
tious objects saw their trade slipping through their 
fingers. To such an extent did this go at one of the 
festivals of the goddess that the silversmiths, whose traffic 



88 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

in little images had been specially smitten, organized a 
riot against Paul, which took place in the theater and 
was so successful that he was forced to quit the city. 

114. But he did not go before Christianity was firmly 
established in Ephesus, and the beacon of the gospel was 
twinkling brightly on the Asian coast, in response to that 
which was shining from the shores of Greece on the other 
side of the ^Egean. We have a monument of his success 
in the churches lying all around Ephesus which St. John 
addressed a few years afterward in the Apocalypse ; for 
they were probably the indirect fruit of Paul's labors. 
But we have a far more astonishing monument of it in 
the Epistle to the Ephesians. This is perhaps the pro- 
foundest book in existence; yet its author evidently 
expected the Ephesians to understand it. If the orations 
of Demosthenes, with their closely packed arguments 
between the articulations of which even a knife cannot be 
thrust, be a monument of the intellectual greatness of the 
Greece which listened to them with pleasure ; if the plays 
of Shakspeare, with their deep views of life and their 
obscure and complex language, be a testimony to the 
strength of mind of the Elizabethan Age, which could 
enjoy such solid fare in a place of entertainment ; then 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, which sounds the lowest 
depths of Christian doctrine and scales the loftiest heights 
of Christian experience, is a testimony to the proficiency 
which Paul's converts had attained under his preaching 
in the capital of Asia. 



CHAPTER VII 
HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 



Paragraphs 115-127. 

115-119. HIS WRITINGS. 115,116. Principal Liter- 
ary Period. 117. Porm of his "Writings. 118. His 
Style. 119. Inspiration. 

120-127. HIS CHARACTER. 121. Combination of 
Natural and Spiritual. 

122-127. Characteristics. 122. Physique; 123. Enter- 
prise; 124. Influence over Men; 125. Unselfishness; 
126. Sense of having a Mission; 127. Personal De- 
votion to Christ. 

115. Principal Literary Period. — It has been men- 
tioned that the third missionary journey closed with a 
flying visit to the churches of Greece. This visit lasted 
several months ; but in the Acts it is passed over in two 
or three verses. Probably it was little marked with 
those exciting incidents which naturally tempt the biog- 
rapher into detail. Yet we know from other sources 
that it was nearly the most important part of Paul's life ; 
for during this half-year he wrote the greatest of all his 
Epistles, that to the Romans, and two others only less 
important — that to the Galatians and the Second to the 
Corinthians. 

116. We have thus alighted on the portion of his 
life most signalized by literary work. Overpowering as 
is the impression of the remarkableness of this man pro- 
duced by following him, as we have been doing, as he 
hurries from province to province, from continent to 

89 



90 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

continent, over land and sea, in pursuit of the object to 
which he was devoted, this impression is immensely deep- 
ened when we remember that he was at the same time the 
greatest thinker of his age, if not of any age, and, in the 
midst of his outward labors, was producing writings 
which have ever since been among the mightiest intel- 
lectual forces of the world, and are still growing in their 
influence. 

In this respect he rises sheer above all other evangel- 
ists and missionaries. Some of them may have ap- 
proached him in certain respects — Xavier or Livingstone 
in the world-conquering instinct, St. Bernard or White- 
field in earnestness and activity. But few of these men 
added a single new idea to the world's stock of beliefs, 
whereas Paul, while at least equaling them in their own 
special line, gave to mankind a new world of thought. 
If his Epistles could perish, the loss to literature would 
be the greatest possible with only one exception — that of 
the Gospels which record the life, the sayings and the 
death of our Lord. They have quickened the mind of 
the Church as no other writings have done, and scattered 
in the soil of the world hundreds of seeds the fruits of 
which are now the general possession of mankind. Out 
of them have been brought the watchwords of progress in 
every reformation which the Church has experienced. 
When Luther awoke Europe from the slumber of cen- 
turies, it was a word of Paul which he uttered with his 
mighty voice: and when, one hundred years ago, our 
own country was revived from almost universal spiritual 
death, she was called by the voices of men who had redis- 
covered the truth for themselves in the pages of Paul. 

117. Form of his Writings. — Yet in penning his 
Epistles Paul may himself have had little idea of the 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 91 

part they were to play in the future. They were drawn 
out of him simply by the exigencies of his work. In the 
truest sense of the word they were letters, written to meet 
particular occasions, not formal writings, carefully de- 
signed and executed with a view to fame or to futurity. 
Letters of the right kind are, before everything else, 
products of the heart ; and it was the eager heart of Paul, 
yearning for the weal of his spiritual children or alarmed 
by the dangers to which they were exposed, that produced 
all his writings. They were part of his day's work. 
Just as he flew over sea and land to revisit his converts, 
or sent Timothy or Titus to carry them his counsels and 
bring news of how they fared, so, when these means were 
not available, he would send a letter with the same design. 

118. His Style. — This may seem to detract from 
the value of these writings. We may be inclined to wish 
that, instead of having the course of his thinking deter- 
mined by the exigencies of so many special occasions and 
his attention distracted by so many minute particulars, 
he had been able to concentrate the force of his mind on 
one perfect book and expound his views on the high sub- 
jects which occupied his thoughts in a systematic form. 
It cannot be maintained that Paul's Epistles are models 
of style. They were written far too hurriedly for ftiis ; 
and the last thing he thought of was to polish his periods. 
Often, indeed, his ideas, by the mere virtue of their fine- 
ness and beauty, run into forms of exquisite language, or 
there is in them such a sustained throb of emotion that 
they shape themselves spontaneously into sentences of 
noble eloquence. But oftener his language is rugged 
and formless ; no doubt it was the first which came to 
hand for expressing what he had to say. He begins 
sentences and omits to finish them; he goes off into 



92 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

digressions and forgets to pick up the line of thought he 
has dropped ; he throws out his ideas in lumps instead of 
fusing them into mutual coherence. 

Nowhere perhaps will there be found so exact a 
parallel to the style of Paul as in the Letters and Speeches 
of Oliver Cromwell. In the Protector's brain there lay 
the best and truest thoughts about England and her com- 
plicated affairs which existed at the time in that island ; 
but, when he tried to express them in speech or letter, 
there issued from his mind the most extraordinary mixture 
of exclamations, questions, arguments soon losing them- 
selves in the sands of words, unwieldy parentheses, and 
morsels of beautiful pathos or subduing eloquence. Yet, 
as you read these amazing utterances, you come by degrees 
to feel that you are getting to see the very heart and soul 
of the Puritan Era, and that you would rather be beside 
this man than any other representative of the period. 
You see the events and ideas of the time in the very 
process of birth. 

Perhaps, indeed, a certain formlessness is a natural 
accompaniment of the very highest originality. The 
perfect expression and orderly arrangement of ideas is a 
later process ; but, when great thoughts are for the first 
time coming forth, there is a kind of primordial rough- 
ness* about them, as if the earth out of which they are 
arising were still clinging to them : the polishing of the 
gold comes late and has to be preceded by the heaving of 
the ore out of the bowels of nature. Paul in his writings 
is hurling forth the original ore of truth. We owe to 
him hundreds of ideas which were never uttered before. 

After the original man has got his idea out, the most 
commonplace scribe may be able to express it for others 
better than he, though he could never have originated it. 
So throughout the writings of Paul there are materials 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 93 

which others may combine into systems of theology 
and ethics, and it is the duty of the Church to do so. 
But his Epistles permit us to see revelation in the very 
process of birth. As we read them closely, we seem to 
be witnessing the creation of a world of truth, as the 
angels wondered to see the firmament evolving itself out 
of chaos and the multitudinous earth spreading itself 
forth in the light. Minute as are the details he has often 
to deal with, the whole of his vast view of the truth is 
recalled in his treatment of every one of them, as the 
whole sky is mirrored in a single drop of dew. What 
could be a more impressive proof of the fecundity of his 
mind than the fact that, amid the innumerable distrac- 
tions of a second visit to his Greek converts, he should 
have written in half a year three such books as Romans, 
Galatians and Second Corinthians? 

119. His Inspiration. —It was God by His Spirit 
who communicated this revelation of truth to Paul. Its 
own greatness and divineness supply the best proof that it 
could have had no other origin. But none the less did 
it break in upon Paul with the joy and pain of original 
thought; it came to him through his experience; it 
drenched and dyed every fiber of his mind and heart ; 
and the expression which it found in his writings was in 
accordance with his peculiar genius and circumstances. 

120. The Man Revealed in his Letters. — It would 
be easy to suggest compensations in the form of Paul's 
writings for the literary qualities they lack. But one of 
these so outweighs all others that it is sufficient by itself 
to justify in this case the ways of God. In no other 
literary form could we, to the same extent, in the writ- 
ings have got the man. Letters are the most personal 



94 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

form of literature. A man may write a treatise or a 
history or even a poem and hide his personality behind 
it ; but letters are valueless unless the writer shows him- 
self. Paul is constantly visible in his letters. You can 
feel his heart throbbing in every chapter he ever wrote. 
He has painted his own portrait — not only that of the 
outward man, but of his innermost feelings — as no one 
else could have painted it. It is not from Luke, admir- 
able as is the picture drawn in the Acts of the Apostles, 
that we learn what the true Paul was, but from Paul 
himself. The truths he reveals are all seen embodied in 
the man. As there are some preachers who are greater 
than their sermons, and the principal gain of their hearers, 
in listening to them, is obtained in the inspiring glimpses 
they obtain of a great and sanctified personality, so the 
best thing in the writings of Paul is Paul himself, or 
rather the grace of God in him. 

121. His character presented a wonderful combina- 
tion of the natural and the spiritual. From nature he 
had received a strongly marked individuality ; but the 
change which Christianity produces was no less obvious 
in him. In no saved man's character is it possible to 
separate nicely what is due to nature from what is due to 
grace ; for nature and grace blend sweetly in the redeemed 
life. In Paul the union of the two was singularly com- 
plete; yet it was always clear that there were two ele- 
ments in him of diverse origin ; and this is, indeed, the 
key to a successful estimate of his character. 

122. Physique. — To begin with what was most sim- 
ply natural — his physique was an important condition of 
his career. As want of ear may make a musical career 
impossible or a failure of eyesight stop the progress of a 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 95 

painter, so the missionary life is impossible without a 
certain degree of physical stamina. To any one reading 
by itself the catalogue of Paul's sufferings and observing 
the elasticity with which he rallied from the severest of 
them and resumed his labors, it would naturally occur 
that he must have been a person of Herculean mold. On 
the contrary, he appears to have been little of stature, 
and his bodily presence was weak. This weakness seems 
to have been sometimes aggravated by disfiguring disease ; 
and he felt keenly the disappointment which he knew his 
bodily presence would excite among strangers ; for every 
preacher who loves his work would like to preach the 
gospel with all the graces which conciliate the favor of 
hearers to an orator. God, however, used his very weak- 
ness, beyond his hopes, to draw out the tenderness of his 
converts ; and so, when he was weak, then he was strong, 
and he was able to glory even in his infirmities. 

There is a theory, which has obtained extensive cur- 
rency, that the disease he suffered from was violent 
ophthalmia, causing disagreeable redness of the eyelids. 
But its grounds are very slender. He seems, on the con- 
trary, to have had a remarkable power of fascinating and 
cowing an enemy with the keenness of his glance, as in 
the story of Elymas the sorcerer, which reminds us of the 
tradition about Luther, that his eyes sometimes so glowed 
and sparkled that bystanders could scarcely look on them. 

There is no foundation whatever for an idea of some 
recent biographers of Paul that his bodily constitution 
was excessively fragile and chronically afflicted with 
shattering nervous disease. No one could have gone 
through his labors or suffered the stoning, the scourgings 
and other tortures he endured without having an excep- 
tionally tough and sound constitution. It is true that he 
was sometimes worn out with illness and torn down with 



96 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

the acts of violence to which he was exposed ; but the 
rapidity of his recovery on such occasions proves what a 
large fund of bodily force he had to draw upon. And 
who can doubt that, when his face was melted with tender 
love in beseeching men to be reconciled to God or lighted 
up with enthusiasm in the delivery of his message, it must 
have possessed a noble beauty far above mere regularity 
of feature? 

123. Enterprise. — There was a good deal that was 
natural in another element of his character on which 
much depended — his spirit of enterprise. There are 
many men who like to grow where they are born ; to have 
to change into new circumstances and make acquaintance 
with new people is intolerable to them. But there are 
others who have a kind of vagabondism in the blood ; 
they are the persons intended by nature for emigrants and 
pioneers ; and, if they take to the work of the ministry, 
they make the best missionaries. 

In modern times no missionary has had this conse- 
crated spirit of adventure in the same degree as that great 
Scotchman, David Livingstone. When he first went to 
Africa, he found the missionaries clustered in the south of 
the continent, just within the fringe of heathenism; they 
had their houses and gardens, their families, their small 
congregations of natives ; and they were content. But 
he moved at once away beyond the rest into the heart of 
heathenism, and dreams of more distant regions never 
ceased to haunt him, till at length he began his extraor- 
dinary tramps over thousands of miles where no mis- 
sionary had ever been before ; and, when death overtook 
him, he was still pressing forward. 

Paul's was a nature of the same stamp, full of courage 
and adventure. The unknown in the distance, instead of 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 97 

dismaying, drew him on. He could not bear to build 
on other men's foundations, but was constantly hastening 
to virgin soil, leaving churches behind for others to build 
up. He believed that, if he lit the lamp of the gospel 
here and there over vast areas, the light would spread in 
his absence by its own virtue. He liked to count the 
leagues he had left behind him, but his watchword was 
ever Forward. In his dreams he saw men beckoning him 
to new countries ; he had always a long unfulfilled pro- 
gram in his mind ; and, as death approached, he was still 
thinking of journeys into the remotest corners of the 
known world. 

124. Influence Over Men. — Another element of his 
character near akin to the one just mentioned was his 
influence over men. There are those to whom it is pain- 
ful to have to accost a stranger even on pressing business ; 
and most men are only quite at home in their own set — 
among men of the same class or profession as themselves. 
But the life he had chosen brought Paul into contact with 
men of every kind, and he had constantly to be introduc- 
ing to strangers the business with which he was charged. 
He might be addressing a king or a consul the one hour 
and a roomful of slaves or common soldiers the next. 
One day he had to speak in the synagogue of the Jews, 
another among a crowd of Athenian philosophers, an- 
other to the inhabitants of some provincial town far 
from the seats of culture. But he could adapt himself 
to every man and every audience. To the Jews he spoke 
as a rabbi out of the Old Testament Scriptures ; to the 
Greeks he quoted the words of their oWn poets ; and to 
the barbarians he talked of the God who giveth rain from 
heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food 
and gladness. 



98 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

When a weak or insincere man attempts to be all 
things to all men, he ends by being nothing to anybody. 
But, living on this principle, Paul found entrance for the 
gospel everywhere, and at the same time won for himself 
the esteem and love of those to whom he stooped. If he 
was bitterly hated by enemies, there was never a man 
more intensely loved by his friends. They received him 
as an angel of God, or even as Jesus Christ himself, and 
were ready to pluck out their eyes and give them to him. 
One church was jealous of another getting too much of 
him. When he was not able to pay a visit at the time 
he had promised, they were furious, as if he had done 
them a wrong. When he was parting from them, they 
wept sore and fell on his neck and kissed him. Numbers 
of young men were continually about him, ready to go on 
his errands. It was the largeness of his manhood which 
was the secret of this fascination ; for to a big nature all 
resort, feeling that in its neighborhood it is well with 
them. 

125. Unselfishness. — This popularity was partly, 
however, due to another quality which shone conspicu- 
ously in his character — the spirit of unselfishness. This 
is the rarest quality in human nature, and it is the most 
powerful of all in its influence on others, where it exists 
in purity and strength. Most men are so absorbed in 
their own interests and so naturally expect others to be 
the same that, if they see any one who appears to have no 
interests of his own to serve but is willing to do as much 
for the sake of others as the generality do for themselves, 
they are at first incredulous, suspecting that he is only 
hiding his designs beneath the cloak of benevolence ; but, 
if he stand the test and his unselfishness prove to be gen- 
uine, there is no limit to the homage they are prepared 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 99 

to pay him. As Paul appeared in country after country 
and city after city, he was at first a complete enigma to 
those whom he approached. They formed all sorts of 
conjectures as to his real design. Was it money he was 
seeking, or power, or something darker and less pure? 
His enemies never ceased to throw out such insinuations. 
But those who got near him and saw the man as he was, 
who knew that he refused money and worked with his 
hands day and night to keep himself above the suspicion 
of mercenary motives, who heard him pleading with them 
one by one in their homes and exhorting them with tears 
to a holy life, who saw the sustained personal interest he 
took in every one of them — these could not resist the 
proofs of his disinterestedness or deny him their affection. 
There never was a man more unselfish ; he had liter- 
ally no interest of his own to live for. Without family 
ties, he poured all the affections of his big nature, which 
might have been given to wife and children, into the 
channels of his work. He compares his tenderness toward 
his converts to that of a nursing-mother to her children ; 
he pleads with them to remember that he is their father 
who has begotten them in the gospel. They are his glory 
and crown, his hope and joy and crown of rejoicing. 
Eager as he was for new conquests, he never lost his hold 
upon those he had won. He could assure his churches 
that he prayed and gave thanks for them night and day, 
and he remembered his converts bv name at the throne of 
grace. How could human nature resist disinterestedness 
like this? If Paul was a conqueror of the world, he 
conquered it by the power of love. 

126. His Mission. — The two most distinctively 
Christian features of his character have still to be men- 
tioned. One of these was the sense of having a divine 



100 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

mission to preach Christ, which he was bound to fulfill. 
Most men merely drift through life, and the work they 
do is determined by a hundred indifferent circumstances ; 
they might as well be doing anything else, or they would 
prefer, if they could afford it, to be doing nothing at all. 
But, from the time when he became a Christian, Paul 
knew that he had a definite work to do ; and the call he 
had received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his 
soul. "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel ;" 
this was the impulse which drove him on. He felt that 
he had a world of new truths to utter and that the salva- 
tion of mankind depended on their utterance. He knew 
himself called to make Christ known to as many of his 
fellow-creatures as his utmost exertions could enable him 
to reach. It was this which made him so impetuous in 
his movements, so blind to danger, so contemptuous of 
suffering. ' ' None of these things move me, neither count 
I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my 
course with joy, and the ministry which I have received 
of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of 
God. ' ' He lived with the account which he would have 
to give at the judgment-seat of Christ ever in his eye, 
and his heart was revived in every hour of discourage- 
ment by the vision of the crown of life which, if he 
proved faithful, the Lord, the righteous Judge, would 
place upon his head. 

127. Devotion to Christ. — The other peculiarly 
Christian quality which shaped his career was personal 
devotion to Christ. This was the supreme characteristic 
of the man, and from first to last the mainspring of his 
activities. From the moment of his first meeting with 
Christ he had but one passion ; his love to his Saviour 
burned with more and more brightness to the end. He 



HIS WRITINGS AND HIS CHARACTER 101 

delighted to call himself the slave of Christ, and had no 
ambition except to be the propagator of His ideas and 
the continuer of His influence. 

He took up this idea of being Christ's representative 
with startling boldness. He says the heart of Christ is 
beating in his bosom toward his converts; he says the 
mind of Christ is thinking in his brain ; he says that he 
is continuing the work of Christ and filling up that which 
was lacking in His sufferings; he says the wounds of 
Christ are reproduced in the scars upon his body ; he says 
he is dying that others may live, as Christ died for the 
life of the world. But it was in reality the deepest 
humility which lay beneath these bold expressions. He 
had the sense that Christ had done everything for him ; 
He had entered into him, casting out the old Paul and 
ending the old life, and had begotten a new man, with 
new designs, feelings and activities. And it was his 
deepest longing that this process should go on and be- 
come complete — that his old self should vanish quite 
away, and that the new self, which Christ had created in 
His own image and still sustained, should become so pre- 
dominant that, when the thoughts of his mind were 
Christ's thoughts, the words on his lips Christ's words, 
the deeds he did Christ's deeds, and the character he wore 
Christ's character, he might be able to say, "I live, yet 
not I, but Christ liveth in me." 



CHAPTER VIII 
PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 



Paragraphs 128-144. 

128, 129. THE EXTERIOR AND THE INTERIOR 

VIEW OF HISTORY. 
130-143. A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN A HEATHEN 

CITY, 131. The Place of Meeting, 132, 133. The 

Persons Present. 134-137. The Services. 138-143. 

Abuses and Irregularities. 139, 140. Of Domestic 

Life. 141-143. Inside the Church. 
144. INFERENCES. 

128. History Without and Within.— A holiday 
visitor to a foreign city walks through the streets, guide- 
book in hand, looking at monuments, churches, public 
buildings and the outsides of the houses, and in this way 
is supposed to be made acquainted with the town ; but, 
on reflection, he will find that he has scarcely learned 
anything about it, because he has not been inside the 
houses. He does not know how the people live — not 
even what kind of furniture they have or what kind of 
food they eat — not to speak of far deeper matters, such 
as how they love, what they admire and pursue, and 
whether they are content with their lot. 

In reading history one is often at a loss in the same 
way. It is only the outside of life that is made visible. 
It is as if the eye were carried along the external surface 
of a tree, instead of seeing a cross-section of its substance. 
The pomp and glitter of the court, the wars waged and 

102 



PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 103 

the victories won, the changes in the constitution and the 
rise and fall of administrations, are faithfully recorded ; 
but the reader feels that he would learn far more of the 
real history of the time if he could see for one hour what 
was happening beneath the roofs of the peasant, the 
shopkeeper, the clergyman and the noble. 

Even in Scripture-history there is the same difficulty. 
In the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we receive 
thrilling accounts of the external details of Paul's his- 
tory ; we are carried rapidly from city to city and in- 
formed of the incidents which accompanied the founding 
of the various churches; but we cannot help wishing 
sometimes to stop and learn what one of these churches 
was like inside. In Paphos or Iconium, in Thessalonica 
or Bercea or Corinth, how did things go on after Paul 
left? What were the Christians like, and what was the 
aspect of their worship? 

129. Happily it is possible to obtain this interior 
view of things. As Luke's narrative describes the outside 
of Paul's career, so Paul's own Epistles permit us to see 
its deeper aspects. They rewrite the history on a differ- 
ent plane. This is especially the case with those Epistles 
written at the close of his third journey, which cast a 
flood of light back upon the period covered by all his 
journeys. In addition to the three Epistles already men- 
tioned as having been written at this time, there is 
another belonging to the same part of his life — the First 
to the Corinthians — which may be said to transport us, 
as on a magician's mantle, back over two thousand years 
and, stationing us in mid-air above a great Greek city, 
in which there was a Christian church, to take the roof 
off the meeting-house of the Christians and permit us to 
see what was going on within. 



104* THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

130. A Christian Gathering in Corinth. — It is a 

strange spectacle we witness from this coigne of vantage. 
It is Sabbath evening, but of course the heathen city 
knows of no Sabbath. The day's work at the busy sea- 
port is over, and the streets are thronged with gay revelers 
intent on a night of pleasure, for it is the wickedest city 
of that wicked ancient world. Hundreds of merchants 
and sailors from foreign parts are lounging about. The 
gay young Roman, who has come across to this Paris for 
a bout of dissipation, drives his light chariot through the 
streets. If it is near the time of the annual games, there 
are groups of boxers, runners, charioteers and wrestlers, 
surrounded by their admirers and discussing their chances 
of winning the coveted crowns. In the warm genial 
climate old and young are out of doors enjoying the 
evening hour, while the sun, going down over the Adriatic, 
is casting its golden light upon the palaces and temples 
of the wealthy city. 

131. Meanwhile the little company of Christians has 
been gathering from all directions to their place of wor- 
ship ; for it is the hour of their stated assembly. The 
place of meeting itself does not rise very clearly before 
our view. But at all events it is no gorgeous temple like 
those by which it is surrounded ; it has not even the pre- 
tensions of the neighboring synagogue. It may be a 
large room in a private house or the wareroom of some 
Christian merchant cleared for the occasion. 

132. Glance round the benches and look at the faces. 
You at once discern one marked distinction among them : 
some have the peculiar facial contour of the Jew, while 
the rest are Gentiles of various nationalities ; and the 
latter are the majority. But look closer still and you 
notice another distinction: some wear the ring which 



PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 105 

denotes that they are free, while others are slaves ; and 
the latter preponderate. Here and there among the 
Gentile members there is one with the regular features of 
the born Greek, perhaps shaded with the pale thought- 
fulness of the philosopher or distinguished with the self- 
confidence of wealth; but not many great, not many 
mighty, not many noble are there ; the majority belong to 
what in this pretentious city would be reckoned the fool- 
ish, the weak, the base and despised things of this world ; 
they are slaves, whose ancestors did not breathe the pel- 
lucid air of Greece but roamed in savage hordes on the 
banks of the Danube or the Don. 

133. But observe one thing besides on all the faces 
present — the terrible traces of their past life. In a 
modern Christian congregation one sees in the faces on 
every hand that peculiar cast of feature which Christian 
nurture, inherited through many centuries, has produced ; 
and it is only here and there that a face may be seen in 
the lines of which is written the tale of debauchery or 
crime. But in this Corinthian congregation these awful 
hieroglyphics are everywhere. "Know ye not," Paul 
writes to them, "that the unrighteous shall not inherit 
the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither forni- 
cators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor 
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor 
covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of 
God. And such were some of you. ' ' Look at that tall, 
sallow-faced Greek : he has wallowed in the mire of Circe's 
swine-pens. Look at that low-browed Scythian slave : he 
has been a pickpocket and a jail-bird. Look at that 
thin-nosed, sharp-eyed Jew : he has been a Shylock, cut- 
ting his pound of flesh from the gilded youth of Corinth. 

Yet there has been a great change. Another story 



106 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

besides the tale of sin is written on these countenances. 
"But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit 
of our God. ' ' Listen, they are singing ; it is the fortieth 
Psalm : "He took me from the fearful pit and from the 
miry clay. ' ' What pathos they throw into the words, 
what joy overspreads their faces ! They know themselves 
to be monuments of free grace and dying love. 

134. The Services. — But suppose them now all 
gathered ; how does their worship proceed ? There was 
this difference between their services and most of ours, 
that instead of one man conducting them — offering their 
prayers, preaching, and giving out the psalms — all the 
men present were at liberty to contribute their part. 
There may have been a leader or chairman ; but one 
member might read a portion of Scripture, another offer 
prayer, a third deliver an address, a fourth raise a hymn, 
and so on. Nor does there seem to have been any fixed 
order in which the different parts of the service occurred ; 
any member might rise and lead away the company into 
praise or prayer or meditation, as he felt prompted. 

135. This peculiarity was due to another great differ- 
ence between them and us. The members were endowed 
with very extraordinary gifts. Some of them had the 
power of working miracles, such as the healing of the 
sick. Others possessed a strange gift called the gift of 
tongues. It is not quite clear what it was ; but it seems 
to have been a kind of tranced utterance, in which the 
speaker poured out an impassioned rhapsody by which 
his religious feeling received both expression and exalta- 
tion. Some of those who possessed this gift were not 
able to tell others the meaning of what they were saying, 



PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 107 

while others had this additional power ; and there were 
those who, though not speaking with tongues themselves, 
were able to interpret what the inspired speakers were 
saying. Then again, there were members who possessed 
the gift of prophecy — a very valuable endowment. It 
was not the power of predicting future events, but a gift 
of impassioned eloquence, the effects of which were some- 
times marvelous : when an unbeliever entered the assem- 
bly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with un- 
controllable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up 
before him, and, falling on his face, he confessed that 
God was among them of a truth. Other members exer- 
cised gifts more like those we are ourselves acquainted 
with, such as the gift of teaching or the gift of manage- 
ment. But in all cases there appears to have been a kind 
of immediate inspiration, so that what they did was not 
the effect of calculation or preparation, but of a strong 
present impulse. 

136. These phenomena are so remarkable that, if 
narrated in a history, they would put a severe strain on 
belief. But the evidence for them is incontrovertible ; 
for no man, writing to people about their own condition, 
invents a mythical description of their circumstances; 
and besides, Paul was writing to restrain rather than 
encourage these manifestations. They show with what 
mighty force, at its first entrance into the world, Chris- 
tianity took possession of the spirits which it touched. 
Each believer received, generally at his baptism, when 
the hands of the baptizer were laid on him, his special 
gift, which, if he remained faithful to it, he continued to 
exercise. It was the Holy Spirit, poured forth without 
stint, that entered into the spirits of men and distributed 
these gifts among them severally as He willed ; and each 



108 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

member had to make use of his gift for the benefit of the 
whole body. 

137. After the services just described were over, the 
members sat down together to a love-feast, which was 
wound up with the breaking of bread in the Lord's Sup- 
per ; and then, after a fraternal kiss, they parted to their 
homes. It was a memorable scene, radiant with brotherly 
love and alive with outbreaking spiritual power. As the 
Christians wended their way homeward through the care- 
less groups of the heathen city, they were conscious of 
having experienced that which eye had not seen nor ear 
heard. 

138. Abuses and Irregularities. — But truth de- 
mands that the dark side of the picture be shown as well 
as the bright one. There were abuses and irregularities 
in the Church which it is exceedingly painful to recall. 
These were due to two things — the antecedents of the 
members and the mixture in the Church of Jewish and 
Gentile elements. If it be remembered how vast was the 
change which most of the members had made in passing 
from the worship of the heathen temples to the pure and 
simple worship of Christianity, it will not excite surprise 
that their old life still clung to them or that they did not 
clearly distinguish which things needed to be changed 
and which might continue as they had been. 

139. Yet it startles us to learn that some of them 
were living in gross sensuality, and that the more philos- 
ophical defended this on principle. One member, ap- 
parently a person of wealth and position, was openly 
living in a connection which would have been a scandal 
even among heathens, and, though Paul had indignantly 
written to have him excommunicated, the Church had 



PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 109 

failed to obey, affecting to misunderstand the order. 
Others had been allured back to take part in the feasts 
in the idol temples, notwithstanding their accompani- 
ments of drunkenness and revelry. They excused them- 
selves with the plea that they no longer ate the feast in 
honor of the gods, but only as an ordinary meal, and 
argued that they would have to go out of the world if 
they were not sometimes to associate with sinners. 

140. It is evident that these abuses belonged to the 
Gentile section of the Church. In the Jewish section, on 
the other hand, there were strange doubts and scruples 
about the same subjects. Some, for instance, revolted 
with the loose behavior of their Gentile brethren, had 
gone to the opposite extreme, denouncing marriage alto- 
gether and raising anxious questions as to whether widows 
might marry again, whether a Christian married to a 
heathen wife ought to put her away, and other points of 
the same nature. While some of the Gentile converts 
were participating in the idol feasts, some of the Jewish 
ones had scruples about buying in the market the meat 
which had been offered in sacrifice to idols, and looked 
with censure on their brethren who allowed themselves 
this freedom. 

141. These difficulties belonged to the domestic life 
of the Christians; but, in their public meetings also, 
there were grave irregularities. The very gifts of the 
Spirit were perverted into instruments of sin ; for those 
possessed of the more show}' gifts, such as miracles and 
tongues, were too fond of displaying them, and turned 
them into grounds of boasting. This led to confusion 
and even uproar ; for sometimes two or three of those 
who spoke with tongues would be pouring forth their 
unintelligible utterances at once, so that, as Paul said, if 



110 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

any stranger had entered their meeting, he would have 
concluded that they were all mad. The prophets spoke 
at wearisome length, and too many pressed forward to 
take part in the services. Paul had sternly to rebuke 
these extravagances, insisting on the principle that the 
spirits of the prophets were subject to the prophets, and 
that, therefore, the spiritual impulse was no apology for 
disorder. 

142. But there were still worse things inside the 
Church. Even the sacredness of the Lord's Supper was 
profaned. It seems that the members were in the habit 
of taking with them to church the bread and wine which 
were needed for this sacrament ; but the wealthy brought 
abundant and choice supplies and, instead of waiting for 
their poorer brethren and sharing their provisions with 
them, began to eat and drink so gluttonously that the 
table of the Lord actually resounded with drunkenness 
and riot. 

143. One more dark touch must be added to this sad 
picture. In spite of the brotherly kiss with which their 
meetings closed, they had fallen into mutual rivalry and 
contention. No doubt this was due to the heterogeneous 
elements brought together in the Church ; but it had been 
allowed to go to great lengths. Brother went to law with 
brother in the heathen courts instead of seeking the arbi- 
tration of a Christian friend. The body of the members 
was split up into four theological factions. Some called 
themselves after Paul himself. These treated the scruples 
of the weaker brethren about meats and other things with 
scorn. Others took the name of Apollonians from 
Apollos, an eloquent teacher from Alexandria, who 
visited Corinth between Paul's second and third journeys. 
These were the philosophical party; they denied the 



PICTURE OF A PAULINE CHURCH 111 

doctrine of the resurrection, because it was absurd to 
suppose that the scattered atoms of the dead body could 
ever be united again. The third party took the name 
of Peter, or Cephas, as in their Hebrew purism they pre- 
ferred to call him. These were narrow-minded Jews, 
who objected to the liberality of Paul's views. The 
fourth party affected to be above all parties and called 
themselves simply Christians. Like many despisers of 
the sects since then, who have used the name of Christian 
in the same way, these were the most bitterly sectarian of 
all and rejected Paul's authority with malicious scorn. 

144. Inferences. — Such is the checkered picture of 
one of Paul's churches given in one of his own Epistles; 
and it shows several things with much impressiveness. It 
shows, for instance, how exceptional, even in that age, his 
own mind and character were, and what a blessing his 
gifts and graces of good sense, of large sympathy blended 
with conscientious firmness, of personal purity and honor, 
were to the infant Church. It shows that it is not behind 
but in front that we have to look for the golden age of 
Christianity. It shows how perilous it is to assume that 
the prevalence of any ecclesiastical usage at that time 
must constitute a rule for all times. Everything of this 
kind was evidently at the experimental stage. Indeed, 
in the latest writings of Paul we find the picture of a very 
different state of things, in which the worship and disci- 
pline of the Church were far more fixed and orderly. It 
is not for a pattern of the machinery of a church we 
ought to go back to this early time, but for a spectacle 
of fresh and transforming spiritual power. This is what 
will always attract to the Apostolic Age the longing eyes 
of Christians ; the power of the Spirit was energizing in 
every member, the tides of fresh emotion swelled in every 



112 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

breast, and all felt that the dayspring of a new revelation 
had visited them ; life, love, light were diffusing them- 
selves everywhere. Even the vices of the young Church 
were the irregularities of abundant life, for the lack of 
which the lifeless order of many a subsequent generation 
has been a poor compensation. 



CHAPTER IX 
HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 



Paragraphs 145-162. 

146-148. THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 

149-153. THE SETTLEMENT OF IT. 149, 150. By 
Peter; 151. By Paul; 152, 153. By the Council of 
Jerusalem. 154-156. Attempt to unsettle it. 157, 
158. Paul crushes the Judaizers. 159-162. A subor- 
dinate Branch of the Question: the Relation of Chris- 
tian Jews to the Law. 

145. The version of the apostle's life supplied in his 
own letters is largely occupied with a controversy which 
cost him much pain and took up much of his time for 
many years, but of which Luke says little. At the date 
when Luke wrote, it was a dead controversy, and it be- 
longed to a different plane from that along which his 
story moves. But at the time when it was raging, it tried 
Paul far more than tiresome journeys or angry seas. It 
was at its hottest about the close of his third journey, and 
the Epistles already mentioned as having been written 
then may be said to have been evoked by it. The Epistle 
to the Galatians especially was a thunderbolt hurled 
against his opponents in this controversy ; and its burn- 
ing sentences show how profoundly he was moved by the 
subject. 

146. The Question at Issue. — The question at issue 
was whether the Gentiles were required to become Jews 

113 



114 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

before they could be true Christians ; or, in other words, 
whether they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. 

147. It had pleased God in the primitive times to 
choose the Jewish race from among the nations and make 
it the repository of salvation; and, till the advent of 
Christ, those from other nations who wished to become 
partakers of the true religion had to seek entrance as 
proselytes within the sacred enclosure of Israel. Having 
thus destined this race to be the guardians of revelation, 
God had to separate them very completely from all other 
nations and from all other aims which might have dis- 
tracted their attention from the sacred trust which had 
been committed to them. For this purpose he regulated 
their whole life with rules and arrangements intended to 
make them a peculiar people, different from all other 
races of the earth. Every detail of their life — their 
forms of worship, their social customs, their dress, their 
food — was prescribed for them ; and all these prescrip- 
tions were embodied in that vast legal instrument which 
they called the Law. The rigorous prescription of so 
many things which are naturally left to free choice was a 
heavy yoke upon the chosen people ; it was a severe dis- 
cipline to the conscience, and such it was felt to be by 
the more earnest spirits of the nation. 

But others saw in it a badge of pride ; it made them 
feel that they were the select of the earth and superior to 
all other people; and, instead of groaning under the 
yoke, as they would have done if their consciences had 
been very tender, they multiplied the distinctions of the 
Jew, swelling the volume of the prescriptions of the law 
with stereotyped customs of their own. To be a Jew 
appeared to them the mark of belonging to the aristocracy 
of the nations; to be admitted to the privileges of this 



HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 115 

position was in their eyes the greatest honor which could 
be conferred on one who did not belong to the common- 
wealth of Israel. Their thoughts were all pent within 
the circle of this national conceit. Even their hopes 
about the Messiah were colored with these prejudices; 
they expected Him to be the hero of their own nation, 
and the extension of Hrs kingdom they conceived as a 
crowding of the other nations within the circle of their 
own through the gateway of circumcision. They expected 
that all the converts of the Messiah would undergo this 
national rite and adopt the life prescribed in the Jewish 
law and tradition ; in short, their conception of Messiah's 
reign was a world of Jews. 

148. Such undoubtedly was the tenor of popular 
sentiment in Palestine when Christ came ; and multitudes 
of those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and entered 
the Christian Church had this set of conceptions as their 
intellectual horizon. They had become Christians, but 
they had not ceased to be Jews ; they still attended the 
temple worship ; they prayed at the stated hours, they 
fasted on the stated days, they dressed in the style of the 
Jewish ritual ; they would have thought themselves defiled 
by eating with uncircumcised Gentiles ; and they had no 
thought but that, if Gentiles became Christians, they 
would be circumcised and adopt the style and customs of 
the Jewish nation. 

149. The Settlement. — The question was settled by 
the direct intervention of God in the case of Cornelius, 
the centurion of Caesarea. When the messengers of 
Cornelius were on their way to the Apostle Peter at 
Joppa, God showed that leader among the apostles, by 
the vision of the sheet full of clean and unclean beasts, 
that the Christian Church was to contain circumcised and 



116 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

uncircumcised alike. In obedience to this heavenly sign 
Peter accompanied the centurion's messengers to Caesarea 
and saw such evidences that the household of Cornelius had 
already, without circumcision, received the distinctively 
Christian endowments of faith and the Holy Ghost, that 
he could not hesitate to baptize them as being Christians 
already. When he returned to Jerusalem, his proceed- 
ings created wonder and indignation among the Christians 
of the strictly Jewish persuasion ; but he defended himself 
by recounting the vision of the sheet and by an appeal 
to the clear fact that these uncircumcised Gentiles were 
proved by their possession of faith and of the Holy Ghost 
to have been already Christians. 

150. This incident ought to have settled the question 
once for all; but the pride of race and the prejudices of 
a lifetime are not easily subdued. Although the Chris- 
tians of Jerusalem reconciled themselves to Peter's con- 
duct in this single case, they neglected to extract frdm 
it the universal principle which it implied; and even 
Peter himself, as we shall subsequently see, did not fully 
comprehend what was involved in his own conduct. 

151. Meanwhile, however, the question had been 
settled in a far stronger and more logical mind than 
Peter's. Paul at this time began his apostolic work at 
Antioch, and soon afterward went forth with Barnabas 
upon his first great missionary expedition into the Gen- 
tile world ; and, wherever they went, he admitted heathens 
into the Christian Church without circumcision. 

Paul in thus acting did not copy Peter. He had 
received his gospel directly from heaven. In the soli- 
tudes of Arabia, in the years immediately after his con- 
version, he had thought this subject out and come to far 
more radical conclusions about it than had yet entered 



HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 117 

the minds of any of the rest of the apostles. To him far 
more than to any of them the law had been a yoke of 
bondage ; he saw that it was only a stern preparation for 
Christianity, not a part of it; indeed, there was in his 
mind a deep gulf of contrast between the misery and 
curse of the one state and the joy and freedom of the 
other. To his mind to impose the yoke of the law on 
the Gentiles would have been to destroy the very genius 
of Christianity ; it would have been the imposition of 
conditions of salvation totally different from that which 
he knew to be the one condition of it in the gospel. 

These were the deep reasons which settled this ques- 
tion in this great mind. Besides, as a man who knew 
the world and whose heart was set on winning the Gentile 
nations to Christ, he felt far more strongly than did the 
Jews of Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how 
fatal such conditions as they meant to impose would be 
to the success of Christianity outside Judaea. The proud 
Romans, the highminded Greeks, would never have con- 
sented to be circumcised and to cramp their life within 
the narrow limits of Jewish tradition ; a religion ham- 
pered with such conditions could never have become the 
universal religion. 

152. But, when Paul and Barnabas came back from 
their first missionary tour to Antioch, they found that a 
still more decisive settlement of this question was re- 
quired ; for Christians of the strictly Jewish sort were com- 
ing down from Jerusalem to Antioch and telling the 
Gentile converts that, unless they were circumcised, they 
could not be saved. In this way they were filling them 
with alarm, lest they might be omitting something on 
which the welfare of their souls depended, and they were 
confusing their minds as to the simplicity of the gospel. 



118 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

To quiet these disturbed consciences it was resolved by 
the church at Antioch to appeal to the leading apostles 
at Jerusalem, and Paul and Barnabas were sent thither 
to procure a decision. This was the origin of what is 
called the Council of Jerusalem, at which this question 
was authoritatively settled. 

The decision of the apostles and elders was in har- 
mony with Paul's practice : the Gentiles were not to be 
required to be circumcised: only they were enjoined to 
abstain from meat offered in sacrifice to idols, from forni- 
cation, and from blood. To these conditions Paul con- 
sented. He did not, indeed, see any harm in eating 
meat which had been used in idolatrous sacrifices, when 
it was exposed for sale in the market ; but the feasts upon 
such meat in the idol temples, which were often followed 
bv wild outbreaks of sensuality, alluded to in the pro- 
hibition of fornication, were temptations against which 
the converts from heathenism required to be warned. 
The prohibition of blood — that is, of eating meat killed 
without the blood being drained off — was a concession to 
extreme Jewish prejudice, which, as it involved no prin- 
ciple, he did not think it necessary to oppose. 

153. So the agitating question appeared to be settled 
by an authority so august that none could question it. 
If Peter, John and James, the pillars of the church at 
Jerusalem, as well as Paul and Barnabas, the heads of the 
Gentile mission, arrived at a unanimous decision, all 
consciences might be satisfied and all opposing mouths 
stopped. 

154. Attempt to Unsettle. — It fills us with amaze- 
ment to discover that even this settlement was not final. 
It would appear that, even at the time when it was come 



HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 119 

to, it was fiercely opposed by some who were present at 
the meeting where it was discussed ; and, although the 
authority of the apostles determined the official note 
which was sent to the distant churches, the Christian 
community at Jerusalem was agitated with storms of 
angry opposition to it. Nor did the opposition soon die 
down. On the contrary, it waxed stronger and stronger. 
It was fed from abundant sources. Fierce national pride 
and prejudice sustained it; probably it was nourished by 
self-interest, because the Jewish Christians would live on 
easier terms with the non-Christian Jews the less the 
difference between them was understood to be ; religious 
conviction, rapidly warming into fanaticism, strengthened 
it ; and very soon it was reinforced by all the rancor of 
hatred and the zeal of propagandism. For to such a 
height did this opposition rise that the party which was 
inflamed with it at length resolved to send out propa- 
gandists to visit the Gentile churches one by one and, in 
contradiction to the official apostolic rescript, warn them 
that they were imperilling their souls by omitting cir- 
cumcision, and could not enjoy the privileges of true 
Christianity unless they kept the Jewish law. 

155. For years and years these emissaries of a nar- 
row-minded fanaticism, which believed itself to be the 
only genuine Christianity, diffused themselves over all the 
churches founded by Paul throughout the Gentile world. 
Their work was not to found churches of their own ; they 
had none of the original pioneer ability of their great 
rival. Their business was to steal into the Christian 
communities he had founded and win them to their own 
narrow views. They haunted Paul's footsteps wherever 
he went, and for many years were a cause to him of un- 
speakable pain. They whispered to his converts that his 



120 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

version of the gospel was not the true one, and that his 
authority was not to be trusted. Was he one of the 
twelve apostles? Had he kept company with Christ? 
They represented themselves as having brought the true 
form of Christianity from Jerusalem, the sacred head- 
quarters ; and they did not scruple to profess that they 
had been sent from the apostles there. They distorted 
the very noblest parts of Paul's conduct to their purpose. 
For instance, his refusal to accept money for his services 
they imputed to a sense of his own lack of authority : the 
real apostles always received pay. In the same way they 
misconstrued his abstinence from marriage. They were 
men not without ability for the work they had under- 
taken : they had smooth, insinuating tongues, they could 
assume an air of dignity, and they did not stick at trifles. 

156. Unfortunately they were by no means without 
success. They alarmed the consciences of Paul's converts 
and poisoned their minds against him. The Galatian 
church especially fell a prey to them ; and the Corinthian 
church allowed its mind to be turned against its founder. 
But, indeed, the defection was more or less pronounced 
everywhere. It seemed as if the whole structure which 
Paul had reared with years of labor was to be thrown to 
the ground. For this was what he believed to be hap- 
pening. Though these men called themselves Christians, 
Paul utterly denied their Christianity. Theirs was not an- 
other gospel ; if his converts believed it, he assured them 
they were fallen from grace ; and in the most solemn 
terms he pronounced a curse on those who were thus de- 
stroying the temple of God which he had built. 

157. Paul Crushes the Judaizers. — He was not, 
however, the man to allow such seduction to go on among 



HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 121 

his converts without putting forth the most strenuous 
efforts to counteract it. He hurried, when he could, to 
see the churches which were being tampered with; he 
sent messengers to bring them back to their allegiance ; 
above all, he wrote letters to those in peril — letters in 
which the extraordinary powers of his mind were exerted 
to the utmost. He argued the subject out with all the 
resources of logic and Scripture ; he exposed the seducers 
with a keenness which cut like steel and overwhelmed 
them with sallies of sarcastic wit ; he flung himself at his 
converts' feet and with all the passion and tenderness of 
his mighty heart implored them to be true to Christ and 
to himself. We possess the records of these anxieties in 
our New Testament ; and it fills us with gratitude to God 
and a strange tenderness to Paul himself to think that 
out of his heart-breaking trial there has come such a 
precious heritage to us. 

158. It is comforting to know that he was successful. 
Persevering as his enemies were, he was more than a 
match for them. Hatred is strong, but stronger still is 
love. In his later writings the traces of his opposition 
are slender or entirely absent. It had given way before 
the crushing force of his polemic, and its traces had been 
swept off the soil of the Church. Had the event been 
otherwise, Christianity would have been a river lost in 
the sands of prejudice near its very source ; it would have 
been at the present day a forgotten Jewish sect instead of 
the religion of the world. 

159. Christian Jews and the Law. — Up to this 
point the course of this ancient controversy can be clearly 
traced. But there is another branch of it about the course 
of which it is far from easy to arrive at with certainty. 



122 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

What was the relation of the Christian Jews to the law, 
according to the teaching and preaching of Paul ? Was 
it their duty to abandon the practices by which they had 
been wont to regulate their lives and abstain from cir- 
cumcising their children or teaching them to keep the 
law ? This would appear to be implied in Paul's prin- 
ciples. If Gentiles could enter the kingdom without 
keeping the law, it could not be necessary for Jews to 
keep it. If the law was a severe discipline intended to 
drive men to Christ, its obligations fell away when this 
purpose was fulfilled. The bondage of tutelage ceased 
as soon as the son entered on the actual possession of his 
inheritance. 

160. It is certain, however, that the other apostles 
and the mass of the Christians of Jerusalem did not for 
many a day realize this. The apostles had agreed not to 
demand from the Gentile Christians circumcision and the 
keeping of the law. But they kept it themselves and 
expected all Jews to keep it. This involved a contradic- 
tion of ideas, and it led to unhappy practical conse- 
quences. If it had continued or been yielded to by Paul, 
it would have split up the Church into two sections, one 
of which would have looked down upon the other. For 
it was part of the strict observance of the law to refuse to 
eat with the uncircumcised ; and the Jews would have 
refused to sit at the same table with those whom they 
acknowledged to be their Christian brethren. This un- 
seemly contradiction actually came to pass in a promi- 
nent instance. The Apostle Peter, chancing on one 
occasion to be in the heathen city of Antioch, at first 
mingled freely in social intercourse with the Gentile 
Christians. But some of the stricter sort, coming thither 
from Jerusalem, so cowed him that he withdrew from the 



HIS GREAT CONTROVERSY 123 

Gentile table and held aloof from his fellow-Christians. 
Even Barnabas was carried away by the same tyranny of 
bigotry. Paul alone was true to the principles of gospel 
freedom, withstanding Peter to the face and exposing the 
inconsistency of his conduct. 

161. Paul never, indeed, carried on a polemic against 
circumcision and the keeping of the law among born 
Jews. This was reported of him by his enemies ; but it 
was a false report. When he arrived in Jerusalem at the 
close of his third missionary journey, the Apostle James 
and the elders informed him of the damage which this 
representation was doing to his good name and advised 
him publicly to disprove it. The words in which they 
made this appeal to him are very remarkable. "Thou 
seest, brother," they said, "how many thousands of Jews 
there are who believe ; and they are all zealous of the 
law ; and they are informed of thee that thou teachest all 
the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, 
saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, 
neither to walk after the customs. Do therefore this that 
we say to thee : We have four men who have a vow on 
them. Take them and purify thyself with them, and be 
at charges with them, that they may shave their heads ; 
and all may know that those things whereof they were 
informed concerning thee are nothing, but thou thyself 
also walkest orderly and keepest the law. ' ' 

Paul complied with this appeal and went through the 
rite which James recommended. This clearly proves that 
he never regarded it as part of his work to dissuade born 
Jews from living as Jews. It may be thought that he 
ought to have done so — that his principles required a 
stern opposition to everything associated with the dispen- 
sation which had passed away. He understood them 



124 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

differently, however, and had a good reason to render for 
the line he pursued. 

We find him advising those who were called into the 
kingdom of Christ being circumcised not to become un- 
circumcised, and those called in uncircumcision not to 
submit to circumcision ; and the reason he gives is that 
circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. 
The distinction was nothing more to him, in a religious 
point of view, than the distinction of sex or the distinc- 
tion of slave and master. In short, it had no religious 
significance at all. If, however, a man professed Jewish 
modes of life as a mark of his nationality, Paul had no 
quarrel with him ; indeed, in some degree he preferred them 
himself. He stickled as little against mere forms as for 
them ; only, if they stood between the soul and Christ or 
between a Christian and his brethren, then he was their 
uncompromising opponent. But he knew that liberty may 
be made an instrument of oppression as well as bondage, 
and, therefore, in regard to meats, for instance, he penned 
those noble recommendations of self-denial for the sake 
of weak and scrupulous consciences which are among the 
most touching testimonies to his utter unselfishness. 

162. Indeed, we have here a man of such heroic size 
that it is no easy matter to define him. Along with the 
clearest vision of the lines of demarcation between the old 
and the new in the greatest crisis of human history and 
an unfaltering championship of principle when real issues 
were involved, we see in him the most genial superiority 
to mere formal rules and the utmost consideration for the 
feelings of those who did not see as he saw. By one 
huge blow he had cut himself free from the bigotry of 
bondage ; but he never fell into the bigotry of liberty, 
and had always far loftier aims in view than the mere 
logic of his own position. 



CHAPTER X 
THE END 



Paragraphs 163-189. 

163, 164. RETURN TO JERUSALEM. Prophecy of 

Approaching Imprisonment. 
165-168. ARREST. 166. Tumult in Temple; 167. Paul 

before the Sanhedrim; 168. Plot of Zealots. 
169-172. IMPRISONMENT AT C^ISAREA. 170. 

Providential Reason for this Confinement. 171. 
' Paul's later Gospel. 172. His Ethics. 
173-176. JOURNEY TO ROME. 173. Appeal to 

Caesar. 174. Voyage to Italy. 175. Arrival in 

Rome. 
176-182. FIRST IMPRISONMENT AT ROME. 176. 

Trial delayed. 177-182. Occupations of a Prisoner. 

178. His Guards Converted; 180. Visits of Apostolic 

Helpers; 181. Messengers from his Churches; 182. 

His Writings. 
183-188. LAST SCENES. 185. Release from Prison; 

New Journeys. 186. Second Imprisonment at Rome. 

187, 188. Trial and Death. 
189. EPILOGUE. 

163. Return to Jerusalem. — After completing his 
brief visit to Greece at the close of his third missionary 
journey, Paul returned to Jerusalem. He must by this 
time have been nearly sixty years of age ; and for twenty 
years he had been engaged in almost superhuman labors. 
He had been traveling and preaching incessantly, and 
carrying on his heart a crushing weight of cares. His 
body had been worn with disease and mangled with pun- 
ishments and abuse ; and his hair must have been whi- 

125 



126 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

tened, and his face furrowed with the lines of age. As 
yet, however, there were no signs of his body breaking 
down, and his spirit was still as keen as ever in its enthu- 
siasm for the service of Christ. 

His eye was specially directed to Rome, and, before 
leaving Greece, he sent word to the Romans that they 
might expect to see him soon. But, as he was hurrying 
toward Jerusalem along the shores of Greece and Asia, 
the signal sounded that his work was nearly done, and 
the shadow of approaching death fell across his path. 
In city after city the persons in the Christian commu- 
nities who were endowed with the gift of prophecy foretold 
that bonds and imprisonment were awaiting him, and, as 
he came nearer to the close of his journey, these warnings 
became more loud and frequent. He felt their solemnity ; 
his was a brave heart, but it was too humble and reverent 
not to be overawed with the thought of death and judg- 
ment. He had several companions with him, but he 
sought opportunities of being alone. He parted from 
his converts as a dying man, telling them that they would 
see his face no more. But, when they entreated him to 
turn back and avoid the threatened danger, he gently 
pushed aside their loving arms, and said, "What mean 
ye to weep and to break my heart ? for I am ready not 
to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the 
name of the Lord Jesus. ' ' 

164. We do not know what business he had on hand 
which so peremptorily demanded his presence in Jerusa- 
lem. He had to deliver up to the apostles a collection 
on behalf of their poor saints, which he had been exerting 
himself to gather in the Gentile churches ; and it may 
have been of importance that he should discharge this 
service in person. Or he may have been solicitous to 



THE END 127 

procure from the apostles a message for his Gentile 
churches, giving an authoritative contradiction to the 
insinuations of his enemies as to the unapostolic character 
of his gospel. At al} events there was some imperative 
call of duty summoning him, and, in spite of the fear of 
death and the tears of friends, he went forward to his 
fate. 

165. Paul's Arrest. — It was the feast of Pentecost 
when he arrived in the city of his fathers, and, as usual 
at such seasons, Jerusalem was crowded with hundreds of 
thousands of pilgrim Jews from all parts of the world. 
Among these there could not but be many who had seen 
him at the work of evangelization in the cities of the 
heathen and come into collision with him there. Their 
rage against him had been checked in foreign lands by 
the interposition of Gentile authority ; but might they not, 
if they met with him in the Jewish capital, wreak on him 
their vengeance with the support of the whole population ? 

166. This was actually the danger into which he fell. 
Certain Jews from Ephesus, the principal scene of his 
labors during his third journey, recognized him in the 
temple and, crying out that here was the heretic who 
blasphemed the Jewish nation, law and temple, brought 
about him in an instant a raging sea of fanaticism. It 
is a wonder he was not torn limb from limb on the spot ; 
but superstition prevented his assailants from defiling 
with blood the court of the Jews, in which he was caught, 
and, before they got him hustled into the court of the 
Gentiles, where they would soon have despatched him, the 
Roman guard, whose sentries were pacing the castle-ram- 
parts which overlooked the temple- courts, rushed down 
and took him under their protection; and, when their 



128 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

captain learned that he was a Roman citizen, his safety 
was secured. 

167. But the fanaticism of Jerusalem was now 
thoroughly aroused, and it raged against the protection 
which surrounded Paul like an angry sea. The Roman 
captain on the day after the apprehension took him down 
to the Sanhedrin in order to ascertain the charge against 
him ; but the sight of the prisoner created such an uproar 
that he had to hurry him away, lest he should be torn in 
pieces. Strange city and strange people! There was 
never a nation which produced sons more richly dowered 
with gifts to make her name immortal ; there was never 
a city whose children clung to her with a more passionate 
affection ; yet, like a mad mother, she tore the very good- 
liest of them in pieces and dashed them mangled from 
her breast. Jerusalem was now within a few years of her 
destruction ; here was the last of her inspired and pro- 
phetic sons come to visit her for the last time, with 
boundless love to her in his heart ; but she would have 
murdered him ; and only the shields of the Gentiles saved 
him from her fury. 

168. Forty zealots banded themselves together under 
a curse to snatch Paul even from the midst of the Roman 
swords ; and the Roman captain was only able to foil 
their plot by sending him under a heavy escort down to 
Caesarea. This was a Roman city on the Mediterranean 
coast ; it was the residence of the Roman governor of 
Palestine and the headquarters of the Roman garrison ; 
and in it the apostle was perfectly safe from Jewish 
violence. 

169. Imprisonment at Caesarea. — Here he re- 
mained in prison for two years. The Jewish authorities 



THE END 129 

attempted again and again either to procure his condem- 
nation by the governor or to get him delivered up to 
themselves, to be tried as an ecclesiastical offender ; but 
they failed to convince the governor that Paul had been 
guilty of any crime of which he could take cognizance or 
to persuade him to hand over a Roman citizen to their 
tender mercies. The prisoner ought to have been re- 
leased, but his enemies were so vehement in asserting that 
he was a criminal of the deepest dye that he was detained 
on the chance of new evidence turning up against him. 
Besides, his release was prevented by the expectation of 
the corrupt governor, Felix, that the life of the leader of 
a religious sect might be purchased from him with a 
bribe. Felix was interested in his prisoner and even 
heard him gladly, as Herod had listened to the Baptist. 

170. Paul was not kept in close confinement; he had 
at least the range of the barracks in which he was detained. 
There we can imagine him pacing the ramparts on the 
edge of the Mediterranean, and gazing wistfully across 
the blue waters in the direction of Macedonia, Achaia 
and Ephesus, where his spiritual children were pining for 
him or perhaps encountering dangers in which they 
sorely needed his presence. 

It was a mysterious providence which thus arrested 
his energies and condemned the ardent worker to inactiv- 
ity. Yet we can see now the reason for it. Paul was 
needing rest. After twenty years of incessant evangeliza- 
tion he required leisure to garner the harvest of experi- 
ence. During all that time he had been preaching that 
view of the gospel which at the beginning of his Chris- 
tian career he had thought out, under the influence of the 
revealing Spirit, in the solitudes of Arabia. But he had 
now reached a stage when, with leisure to think, he might 



130 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

penetrate into more recondite regions of the truth as it is 
in Jesus. And it was so important that he should have 
this leisure that, in order to secure it, God even permitted 
him to be shut up in prison. 

171. PauFs Later Gospel. — During these two years 
he wrote nothing ; it was a time of internal mental activ- 
ity and silent progress. But, when he began to write 
again, the results of it were at once discernible. The 
Epistles written after this imprisonment have a mellower 
tone and set forth a profounder view of doctrine than his 
earlier writings. There is no contradiction, indeed, or 
inconsistency between his earlier and later views: in 
Ephesians and Colossians he builds on the broad founda- 
tions laid in Romans and Galatians. But the superstruc- 
ture is loftier and more imposing. He dwells less on the 
work of Christ and more on His person ; less on the 
justification of the sinner and more on the sanctification 
of the saint. 

In the gospel revealed to him in Arabia he had set 
Christ forth as dominating mundane history, and shown 
His first coming to be the point toward which the destinies 
of Jews and Gentiles had been tending. In the gospel 
revealed to him at Caesarea the point of view is extra- 
mundane: Christ is represented as the reason for the 
creation of all things, and as the Lord of angels and of 
worlds, to whose second coming the vast procession of the 
universe is moving forward — of whom, and through 
whom, and to whom are all things. 

In the earlier Epistles the initial act of the Christian 
life — the justification of the soul — is explained with ex- 
haustive elaboration : but in the later Epistles it is on the 
subsequent relations to Christ of the person who has been 
already justified that the apostle chiefly dwells. Accord- 



THE END 131 

ing to his teaching, the whole spectacle of the Christian 
life is due to a union between Christ and the soul ; and 
for the description of this relationship he has invented 
a vocabulary of phrases and illustrations : believers are 
in Christ, and Christ is in them : they have the same 
relation to Him as the stones of a building to the founda- 
tion-stone, as the branches to the tree, as the members to 
the head, as a wife to her husband. This union is ideal, 
for the divine mind in eternity made the destiny of Christ 
and the believer one ; it is legal, for their debts and 
merits are common property ; it is vital, for the connec- 
tion with Christ supplies the power of a holy and pro- 
gressive life; it is moral, for, in mind and heart, in 
character and conduct, Christians are constantly becom- 
ing more and more identical with Christ. 

172. His Ethics. — Another feature of these later 
Epistles is the balance between their theological and their 
moral teaching. This is visible even in the external 
structure of the greatest of them, for they are nearly 
equally divided into two parts, the first of which is 
occupied with doctrinal statements and the second with 
moral exhortations. The ethical teaching of Paul spreads 
itself over all parts of the Christian life ; but it is not 
distinguished by a systematic arrangement of the various 
kinds of duties, although the domestic duties are pretty 
fully treated. Its chief characteristic lies in the motives 
which it brings to bear upon conduct. 

To Paul Christian morality was emphatically a moral- 
ity of motives. The whole history of Christ, not in the 
details of His earthly life, but in the great features of his 
redemptive journey from heaven to earth and from earth 
back to heaven again, as seen from the extramundane 
standpoint of these Epistles, is a series of examples to be 



132 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

copied by Christians in their daily conduct. No duty is 
too small to illustrate one or other of the principles which 
inspired the divinest acts of Christ. The commonest acts 
of humility and beneficence are to be imitations of the 
condescension which brought Him from the position of 
equality with God to the obedience of the cross ; and the 
ruling motive of the love and kindness practised by 
Christians to one another is to be the recollection of their 
common connection with Him. 

173. Appeal to Caesar. — After Paul's imprisonment 
had lasted for two years, Felix was succeeded in the gov- 
ernorship of Palestine by Festus. The Jews had never 
ceased to intrigue to get Paul into their hands, and they 
at once assailed the new ruler with further importunities. 
As Festus seemed to be wavering, Paul availed himself 
of his privilege of appeal as a Roman citizen and de- 
manded to be sent to Rome and tried at the bar of the 
emperor. This could not be refused him ; and a prisoner 
had to be sent to Rome at once after such an appeal was 
taken. Very soon, therefore, Paul was shipped off under 
the charge of Roman soldiers and in the company of 
many other prisoners on their way to the same destina- 
tion. 

174. Voyage to Italy. — The journal of the voyage 
has been preserved in the Acts of the Apostles and is 
acknowledged to be the most valuable document in exist- 
ence concerning the seamanship of ancient times. It is 
also a precious document of Paul's life ; for it shows how 
his character shone out in a novel situation. A ship is a 
kind of miniature of the world. It is a floating island, 
in which there are the government and the governed. 
But the government is, like that of states, liable to sudden 



THE END 133 

social upheavals, in which the ablest man is thrown to 
the top. This was a voyage of extreme perils, which 
required the utmost presence of mind and power of win- 
ning the confidence and obedience of those on board. 
Before it was ended Paul was virtually both the captain 
of the ship and the general of the soldiers ; and all on 
board owed to him their lives. 

175. Arrival in Rome. — At length the dangers of 
the deep were left behind ; and Paul found himself ap- 
proaching the capital of the Roman world by the Appian 
Road, the great highway by which Rome was entered by 
travelers from the East. The bustle and noise increased 
as he neared the city, and the signs of Roman grandeur 
and renown multiplied at every step. For many years 
he had been looking forward to seeing Rome, but he had 
always thought of entering it in a very different guise 
from that which now he wore. He had always thought 
of Rome as a successful general thinks of the central 
stronghold of the country he is subduing, who looks 
eagerly forward to the day when he will direct the charge 
against its gates. Paul was engaged in the conquest of 
the world for Christ, and Rome was the final position he 
had hoped to carry in his Master's name. Years ago he 
had sent to it the famous challenge, "I am ready to 
preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also ; for I am 
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power 
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. ' ' But 
now, when he found himself actually at its gates and 
thought of the abject condition in which he was — an old, 
gray -haired, broken man, a chained prisoner just escaped 
from shipwreck — his heart sank within him, and he felt 
dreadfully alone. 

At the right moment, however, a little incident took 



134 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

place which restored him to himself: at a small town 
forty miles out of Rome he was met by a little band of 
Christian brethren, who, hearing of his approach, had 
come out to welcome him ; and, ten miles farther on, he 
came upon another group, who had come out for the 
same purpose. Self-reliant as he was, he was exceed- 
ingly sensitive to human sympathy, and the sight of these 
brethren and their interest in him completely revived 
him. He thanked God and took courage ; his old feel- 
ings came back in their wonted strength ; and, when, in 
the company of these friends, he reached that shoulder 
of the Alban Hills from which the first view of the city 
is obtained, his heart swelled with the anticipation of 
victory ; for he knew he carried in his breast the force 
which would yet lead captive that proud capital. 

It was not with the step of a prisoner, but with that 
of a conqueror, that he passed at length beneath the city 
gate. His road lay along that very Sacred Way by 
which many a Roman general had passed in triumph to 
the Capitol, seated on a car of victory, followed by the 
prisoners and spoils of the enemy, and surrounded with 
the plaudits of rejoicing Rome. Paul looked little like 
such a hero : no car of victory carried him, he trode the 
causewayed road with wayworn foot ; no medals or orna- 
ments adorned his person, a chain of iron dangled from 
his wrist ; no applauding crowds welcomed his approach, 
a few humble friends formed all his escort ; yet never did 
a more truly conquering footstep fall on the pavement of 
Rome or a heart more confident of victory pass within 
her gates. 

176. Imprisonment. — Meanwhile, however, it was 
not to the Capitol his steps were bent, but to a prison ; 
and he was destined to lie in prison long, for his trial did 



THE END 135 

not come on for two years. The law's delays have been 
proverbial in all countries and at all eras ; and the law 
of imperial Rome was not likely to be free from this 
reproach during the reign of Nero, a man of such frivol- 
ity that any engagement of pleasure or freak of caprice 
was sufficient to make him put off the most important call 
of business. * The imprisonment, it is true, was of the 
mildest description. It may have been that the officer 
who brought him to Rome spoke a good word for the 
man who had saved his life during the voyage, or the 
officer to whom he was handed over, and who is known in 
profane history as a man of justice and humanity, may 
have inquired into his case and formed a favorable opin- 
ion of his character ; but at all events Paul was permitted 
to hire a house of his own and live in it in perfect free- 
dom, with the single exception that a soldier, who was 
responsible for his person, was his constant attendant. 

177. Occupation in Prison. — This was far from the 
condition which such an active spirit would have coveted. 
He would have liked to be moving from synagogue to 
synagogue in the immense city, preaching in its streets 
and squares, and founding congregation after congrega- 
tion among the masses of its population. Another man, 
thus arrested in a career of ceaseless movement and im- 
mured within prison walls, might have allowed his mind 
to stagnate in sloth and despair. But Paul behaved very 
differently. Availing himself of every possibility of the 
situation, he converted his one room into a center of 
far-reaching activity and beneficence. On the few square 
feet of space allowed him he erected a fulcrum with 
which he moved the world, establishing within the walls 
of Nero's capital a sovereignty more extensive than his 
own. 



136 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

178. Even the most irksome circumstance of his lot 
was turned to good account. This was the soldier by 
whom he was watched. To a man of Paul's eager tem- 
perament and restlessness of mood this must often have 
been an intolerable annoyance ; and, indeed, in the letters 
written during this imprisonment he is constantly refer- 
ring to his chain, as if it were never out of his mind. 
But he did not suffer this irritation to blind him to the 
opportunity of doing good presented by the situation. 
Of course his attendant was changed every few hours, as 
one soldier relieved another upon guard. In this way 
there might be six or eight with him every four-and- 
twenty hours. They belonged to the imperial guard, the 
flower of the Roman army. 

Paul could not sit for hours beside another man with- 
out speaking of the subject which lay nearest his heart. 
He spoke to these soldiers about their immortal souls and 
the faith of Christ. To men accustomed to the horrors of 
Roman warfare and the manners of Roman barracks noth- 
ing could be more striking than a life and character like 
his ; and the result of these conversations was that many of 
them became changed men, and a revival spread through 
the barracks and penetrated into the imperial household 
itself. His room was sometimes crowded with these stern, 
bronzed faces, glad to see him at other times than those 
when duty required them to be there. He sympathized 
with them and entered into the spirit of their occupation ; 
indeed, he was full of the spirit of the warrior himself. 

We have an imperishable relic of these visits in an 
outburst of inspired eloquence which he dictated at this 
period : ' ' Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be 
able to stand against the wiles of the devil ; for we wrestle 
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 



THE END 137 

this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that 
ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and, having 
done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins 
girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of 
righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of 
the gospel of peace ; above all, taking the shield of faith, 
wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of 
the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation and the 
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. * ' That 
picture was drawn from the life, from the armor of the 
soldiers in his room ; and perhaps these ringing sentences 
were first poured into the ears of his warlike auditors 
before they were transferred to the Epistle in which they 
have been preserved. 

179. Visitors. — But he had other visitors. All who 
took an interest in Christianity in Rome, both Jews and 
Gentiles, gathered to him. Perhaps there was not a day 
of the two years of his imprisonment but he had such 
visitors. The Roman Christians learned to go to that 
room as to an oracle or shrine. Many a Christian teacher 
got his sword sharpened there ; and new energy began to 
diffuse itself through the Christian circles of the city. 
Many an anxious father brought his son, many a friend 
his friend, hoping that a word from the apostle's lips 
might waken the sleeping conscience. Many a wanderer, 
stumbling in there by chance, came out a new man. 
Such an one was Onesimus, a slave from Colossae, who 
arrived in Rome as a runaway, but was sent back to his 
Christian master, Philemon, no longer as a slave, but as 
a brother beloved. 

180. Still more interesting visitors came. At all 



138 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

periods of his life he exercised a strong fascination over 
young men. They were attracted by the manly soul 
within him, in which they found sympathy with their 
aspirations and inspiration for the noblest work. These 
youthful friends, who were scattered over the world in the 
work of Christ, flocked to him at Rome. Timothy and 
Luke, Mark and Aristarchus, Tychicus and Epaphras, 
and many more came, to drink afresh at the well of his 
ever-springing wisdom and earnestness. And he sent 
them forth again, to carry messages to his churches or 
bring him news of their condition. 

181. Of his spiritual children in the distance he 
never ceased to think. Daily he was wandering in imag- 
ination among the glens of Galatia and along the shores 
of Asia and Greece ; every night he was praying for the 
Christians of Antioch and Ephesus, of Philippi and 
Thessalonica and Corinth. Nor were gratifying proofs 
awanting that they were remembering him. Now and 
then there would appear in his lodging a deputy from 
some distant church, bringing the greetings of his con- 
verts or, perhaps, a contribution to meet his temporal 
wants, or craving his decision on some point of doctrine 
or practice about which difficulty had arisen. These 
messengers were not sent empty away : they carried warm- 
hearted messages of golden words of counsel from their 
apostolic friend. 

Some of them carried far more. When Epaphrodi- 
tus, a deputy from the church at Philippi, which had sent 
to their dear father in Christ an offering of love, was 
returning home, Paul sent with him, in acknowledgment 
of their kindness, the Epistle to the Philippians, the most 
beautiful of all his letters, in which he lays bare his very 
heart and every sentence glows with love more tender than 



THE END 139 

a woman's. When the slave Onesimus was sent back 
to Colossae, he received, as the branch of peace to offer 
to his master, the exquisite little Epistle to Philemon, 
a priceless monument of Christian courtesy. He car- 
ried, too, a letter addressed to the church of the town 
in which his master lived, the Epistle to the Colos- 
sians. 

The composition of these Epistles was by far the most 
important part of Paul 1 s varied prison activity; and he 
crowned this labor with the writing of the Epistle to the 
Ephesians, which is perhaps the profoundest and sublim- 
est book in the world. The Church of Christ has derived 
many benefits from the imprisonment of the servants of 
God; the greatest book of uninspired religious genius, 
the Pilgrim's Progress, was written in a jail; but never 
did there come to the Church a greater mercy in the 
disguise of misfortune than when the arrest of Paul's 
bodily activities at Caesarea and Rome supplied him with 
the leisure needed to reach the depths of truth sounded in 
the Epistle to the Ephesians. 

182. His Writings. — It may have seemed a dark 
dispensation of providence to Paul himself that the course 
of life he had pursued so long was so completely changed ; 
but God's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts and 
His ways than man's ways ; and He gave Paul grace to 
overcome the temptations of his situation and do far more 
in his enforced inactivity for the welfare of the world 
and the permanence of his own influence than he could 
have done by twenty years of wandering missionary work. 
Sitting in his room, he gathered within the sounding 
cavity of his sympathetic heart the sighs and cries of 
thousands far away, and diffused courage and help in 
every direction from his own inexhaustible resources. 



140 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

He sank his mind deeper and deeper in solitary thought, 
till, smiting the rock in the dim depth to which he had 
descended, he caused streams to gush forth which are still 
gladdening the city of God. 

183. Release from Prison. — The book of Acts sud- 
denly breaks off with a brief summary of Paul's two 
years' imprisonment at Rome. Is this because there was 
no more to tell ? When his trial came on, did it issue 
in his condemnation and death ? Or did he get out of 
prison and resume his old occupations? Where Luke's 
lucid narrative so suddenly deserts us, tradition comes in 
proffering its doubtful aid. It tells us that he was 
acquitted on his trial and let out of prison ; that he 
resumed his travels, visiting Spain among other places ; 
but that before long he was arrested again and sent back 
to Rome, where he died a martyr's death at the cruel 
hands of Nero. 

184. New Journeys. — Happily, however, we are not 
altogether dependent on the precarious aid of tradition. 
We have writings of Paul's own undoubtedly subsequent 
to the two years of his first imprisonment. These are 
what are called the Pastoral Epistles — the Epistles to 
Timothy and Titus. In these we see that he regained his 
liberty and resumed his employment of revisiting his old 
churches and founding new ones. His footsteps cannot, 
indeed, be any longer traced with certainty. We find 
him back at Ephesus and Troas ; we find him in Crete, 
an island at which he touched on his voyage to Rome and 
in which he may then have become interested ; we find 
him exploring new territory in the northern parts of 
Greece. We see him once more, like the commander of 
an army who sends his aides-de-camp all over the field of 



THE END 141 

battle, sending out his young assistants to organize and 
watch over the churches. 

185. But this was not to last long. An event had 
happened immediately after his release from prison which 
could not but influence his fate. This was the burning 
of Rome — an appalling disaster, the glare of which even 
at this distance makes the heart shudder. It was proba- 
bly a mad freak of the malicious monster who then wore 
the imperial purple. But Nero saw fit to attribute it to 
the Christians, and instantly the most atrocious persecu- 
tion broke out against them. Of course the fame of this 
soon spread over the Roman world ; and it was not likely 
that the foremost apostle of Christianity could long 
escape. Every Roman governor knew that he could not 
do the emperor a more pleasing service than by sending 
to him Paul in chains. 

186. Second Imprisonment. — It was not long, ac- 
cordingly, before Paul was lying once more in prison at 
Rome ; and it was no mild imprisonment this time, but 
the worst known to the law. No troops of friends now 
filled his room ; for the Christians of Rome had been 
massacred or scattered, and it was dangerous for any one 
to avow himself a Christian. We have a letter written 
from his dungeon, the last he ever wrote, the Second 
Epistle to Timothy, which affords us a glimpse of un- 
speakable pathos into the circumstances of the prisoner. 
He tells us that one part of his trial is already over. 
Not a friend stood by him as he faced the bloodthirsty 
tyrant who sat on the judgment-seat. But the Lord 
stood by him and enabled him to make the emperor and 
the spectators in the crowded basilica hear the sound of 
the gospel. The charge against him had broken down. 



142 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

But he had no hope of escape. Other stages of the trial 
had yet to come, and he knew that evidence to condemn 
him would either be discovered or manufactured. 

The letter betrays the miseries of his dungeon. He 
pi ays Timothy to bring a cloak he had left at Troas, to 
defend him from the damp of the cell and the cold of the 
winter. He asks for his books and parchments, that he 
may relieve the tedium of his solitary hours with the 
studies he had always loved. But, above all, he beseeches 
Timothy to come himself ; for he was longing to feel the 
touch of a friendly hand and see the face of a friend yet 
once again before he died. 

Was the brave heart then conquered at last? Read 
the Epistle and see. How does it begin? "I also suffer 
these things ; nevertheless I am not ashamed ; for I know 
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able 
to keep that which I have committed unto Him against 
that day." How does it end? "I am now ready to be 
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a 
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
Judge, shall give me at that day ; and not to me only, 
but unto all them that love His appearing." That is 
not the strain of the vanquished. 

187. Trial. — There can be little doubt that he ap- 
peared again at Nero's bar, and this time the charge did 
not break down. In all history there is not a more start- 
ling illustration of the irony of human life than this 
scene of Paul at the bar of Nero. On the judgment-seat, 
clad in the imperial purple, sat a man who in a bad world 
had attained the eminence of being the very worst and 
meanest being in it — a man stained with every crime, the 



THE END 143 

murderer of his own mother, of his wives and of his best 
benefactors ; a man whose whole being was so steeped in 
every namable and unnamable vice that body and soul 
of him were, as some one said at the time, nothing but a 
compound of mud and blood ; and in the prisoner's dock 
stood the best man the world contained, his hair whitened 
with labors for the good of men and the glory of God. 
Such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and such 
the man who stood in the place of the criminal. 

188. Death. — The trial ended, Paul was condemned 
and delivered over to the executioner. He was led out 
of the city with a crowd of the lowest rabble at his heels. 
The fatal spot was reached ; he knelt beside the block ; 
the headsman's axe gleamed in the sun and fell ; and the 
head of the apostle of the world rolled down in the dust. 

189. So sin did its uttermost and its worst. Yet 
how poor and empty was its triumph ! The blow of the 
axe only smote off the lock of the prison and let the spirit 
go forth to its home and to its crown. The city falsely 
called eternal dismissed him with execration from her 
gates ; but ten thousand times ten thousand welcomed him 
in the same hour at the gates of the city which is really 
eternal. Even on earth Paul could not die. He lives 
among us to-day with a life a hundredfold more influ- 
ential than that which throbbed in his brain whilst the 
earthly form which made him visible still lingered on the 
earth. Wherever the feet of them who publish the glad 
tidings go forth beautiful upon the mountains, he walks 
by their side as an inspirer and a guide ; in ten thousand 
churches every Sabbath and on a thousand thousand 
hearths every day his eloquent lips still teach that gospel 
of which he was never ashamed ; and, wherever there are 



144 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

human souls searching for the white flower of holiness or 
climbing the difficult heights of self-denial, there he 
whose life was so pure, whose devotion to Christ was so 
entire, and whose pursuit of a single purpose was so 
unceasing, is welcomed as the best of friends. 



HINTS TO TEACHERS AND QUESTIONS 
FOR PUPILS 

Teacher's Apparatus. — English theology has no 
juster cause for pride than the books it has produced on 
the Life of Paul. Perhaps there is no other subject in 
which it has so outdistanced all rivals. Conybeare and 
Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paul will probably al- 
ways keep the foremost place ; in many respects it is near- 
ly perfect ; and a teacher who has mastered it will be suffi- 
ciently equipped for his work and require no other help. 
The works of Lewin and Farrar are written on the same 
lines; the former is rich in maps of countries and plans 
of towns ; and the strong point of the latter is the analysis 
of Paul's writings — the exposition of the mind of Paul. 
Sir William Ramsay has made the whole subject pecul- 
iarly his own by the enthusiasm and labors of a lifetime. 
The German books are not nearly so valuable. Haus- 
rath's The Apostle Paul is a brilliant performance, but 
it is as weak in handling the deeper things as it is strong 
in coloring up the external and picturesque features of 
the subject. Baur's work is an amazingly clever tour de 
force, but it is not so much a well-proportioned picture 
of the apostle as a prolonged paradox thrown down as a 
challenge to the learned. The latest large German work, 
Clemen's Paulus, proceeds on the principle that the 
miracle is untrue, and the effect may be sufficiently seen 
in the account it gives of the first visit to Philippi. In 
Weinal's Paulus, pp. 312, 313, there appears a forbidding 
picture of the effects produced by the teaching of the 

145 



146 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

subject in the author's country; in our country, on the 
contrary, it has long been among the most attractive 
subj ects for both teachers and students. Adolphe Monod ' s 
Saint Paul, a series of five discourses, is an inquiry into 
the secret of the apostle's life, written with deep sympathy 
and glowing eloquence; and Kenan's work, with the 
same title, gives, with unrivaled brilliance, a picture of the 
world in which the apostle lived, if not of the apostle 
himself. There are books on the subject which do honor 
to American scholarship from the pens of Cone, Gilbert, 
Bacon and A. T. Robertson, the last mentioned with a 
valuable bibliography. But the best help is to be found 
in the original sources themselves — the cameolike pictures 
of Luke and the self -revelations of Paul's Epistles. The 
latter especially, read in the fresh translation of Cony- 
beare, will show the apostle to any one who has eyes to 
see. Johnstone's wall-map of Paul's journey is indis- 
pensable in the class-room. 

Chapter I 

Paragraph 2. Subject of class essay — Paul and the 
other Apostles : Points of Connection and Contrast. 

5. Subject of class essay — Relation of Christianity to 
Learning and Intellectual Gifts : its Use of them and its 
Independence of them. 

9. Quote passages of Scripture in which Paul's destination 
to be the missionary of the Gentiles is expressed. 



Chapter II 

On the external features of the period embraced in 
this chapter compare the corresponding pages of Hausrath ; 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 147 

on the internal features see Principal Rainy's lecture on 
Paul in The Evangelical Succession Lectures, vol. i. 

14. On the chronology of Paul's life see the notes at 
the end of Conybeare and Howson, and Farrar, ii. 623. 

The principal dates may be given at this stage from 
Conybeare and Howson, for reference throughout : 



36. Conversion. 

38. Flight to Tarsus. 

44. Brought to Antioch by Barnabas. 

48. First Missionary Journey. 

50. Council at Jerusalem. 

51-54. Second Missionary Journey. 1 and 2 Tkessa- 

lonians written at Corinth. 
54-58. Third Missionary Journey. 

57. 1 Corinthians written at Ephesus ; 2 Corinthians, in 

Macedonia; Galatians, at Corinth. 

58. Romans written at Corinth. 

Arrest at Jerusalem. 
59- In prison at Caesarea. 

60. Voyage to Rome. 

62. Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, writ- 

ten at Rome. 

63. Release from prison. 

61. 1 Timothy and Titus written. 

68. In prison again at Rome. 2 Timothy. 
Death. 

With these may be compared some of Ramsay's dates 
— the conversion, 33 ; First Missionary Journey, 47-49 ; 
Second, 50-53; Third, 53-57; Voyage to Rome, 59, 60; 
Trial and Acquittal, 61 ; Second Trial, 67. 

Whereas Conybeare and Howson consider Galatians 
to have been written, in close conjunction with Romans, 
at Corinth during the Fourth Missionary Journey, Ram- 
say believes it to have been written at Antioch before this 



148 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

journey commenced; and, whereas the older authorities 
suppose it to be addressed to Galatians evangelized by 
Paul during the Second Missionary Journey, though no 
details of such a conquest are found in Acts, Ramsay 
holds the recipients of the Epistle to have been the 
churches in the interior of Asia Minor evangelized dur- 
ing the First Missionary Journey, the regions of Phrygia 
and Lycaonia in which these were situated forming at that 
time part of the Province of Galatia, the boundaries 
of which had been extended. This is the South Gal- 
atian theory, the fullest statement and defence of which 
will be found in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible , 
vol. v. 

15. The goat's-hair cloth was called "cilicium," 
from the name of the province. 

16. Dean Howson's Metaphors of St. Paul. Also 
Hausrath, p. 15. 

18. Compare the long lists of sins frequent in the 
Epistle. 

23. Subject for class essay: Paul's First Sight of 
Jerusalem. 

27. A startling picture of the state of society in 
Jerusalem might be constructed from the materials sup- 
plied in Matt, xxiii. 

28. Detailed comparison of the experience of Paul 
with that of Luther : their early religious ideas ; the state 
of religion around them ; their failure to find peace and 
their sufferings of conscience; their discovery of the 
righteousness of God. 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 149 

On the religious associations of Paul's early life see 
the first 100 pages of Reuss' Ch?'istian Theology in the 
Apostolic Age. 

31. On the history of Christianity between the death 
of Christ and the conversion of St. Paul see Dykes' From 
Jerusalem to Antioch. 

34. The question whether Paul was married. His 
views on the place of woman. 

35. Perhaps Acts xxvi. 11 may not imply that any 
of the Christians yielded to his endeavors to make them 
blaspheme. 

15. What was the Latin name for a town enjoying the 

political privileges possessed by Tarsus ? 

16. What are Paul's principal metaphors? 

17. Where does he make this boast? 

19. What was the Latin name for the Roman citizenship, 

and what privileges did it include ? On what occa- 
sions is Paul recorded to have used it ? On what 
occasions might he have been expected to use it, when 
he omitted to do so ? What reasons may be given 
for the omission ? 

20. Name friends of Paul who were engaged in the same 

trade as he. 

21. Give Paul's quotations from the Greek poets. Do 

you know the authors he quoted from ? Explain 
Septuagint and Diaspora. 

22. Where does Paul refer to the sophists and rhetoricians ? 
26. Make a collection of Paul's quotations from the Old 

Testament, showing whence each of them was taken. 
28. What does Paul mean by the Law? 
32. Trace out the points of contact between the language 
and views of Stephen's speech and those of Paul. 
Explain — 

"Si Stephanus 11011 orasset, 
Ecclesia Paulum non habereL" 



150 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

34. Where is it said that Paul voted in the Sanhedrim ? 
45. Collect Paul's references to the persecution and bring 
out how severe it was. 



Chapter III 

On Paul's mental processes before and at the time 
of his conversion see Principal Rainy's lecture, already 
quoted. 

The conversion of Paul is one of the strong apologetic 
positions of Christianity. See this worked out in Lyttel- 
ton's Conversion of St. Paul. But it might be worked 
out afresh on more modern lines. 

40. Principal Rainy, in the lecture above referred to, 
says that he sees no evidence of such a conflict as this in 
Paul's mind; but what, then, is the meaning of i ' It is 
hard for thee to kick against the pricks"? 

41. The general tenor of the earliest Christian apol- 
ogetic, as it is to be found in the speeches of the Acts of 
the Apostles. 

44. Nothing could be more alien to the spirit of the 
New Testament than to turn this round the other way, 
and, assuming that what Paul saw was only a vision, 
argue that the other appearances of Christ, because they 
are put on the same level, may have been only visions 
too. This is a mere stroke of dialectical cleverness, 
which shows no regard to the obvious intention of the 
writers. 

There are three accounts of the conversion of Paul in the 
Acts. What is the significance of this reduplica- 
tion in so small a book ? Enumerate the differences 
between these accounts, and explain them. 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 151 

38. Prove that the first Christians called Christianity The 
Way, and explain the signification of this name. 



Chapter IV 

On the subject of this chapter see the works on Paul- 
ine Theology by Pfleiderer, Bruce, Du Bose, Titius and 
Stevens, also the relevant portions of any of the Hand- 
books of New Testament Theology — Weiss, Reuss, 
Schmid, van Oosterzee, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, and 
Stevens. Weiss' exposition is among the most solid and 
trustworthy. He divides Paulinism into four sections : — 

I. The Earliest Gospel of Paul during the Heathen 
Mission (gathered from Thessalonians). One 
chapter — the Gospel as the Way of Deliverance 
from Judgment. 
II. The Doctrinal System of the Four great Doctri- 
nal and Controversial Epistles (Corinthians, 
Romans, Galatians). Ch. i. Universal Sinfulness 
of Man; ch. ii. Heathenism and Judaism; ch. iii. 
Prophecy and Fulfilment; ch. iv. Christology; ch. 
v. Redemption and Justification; ch. vi. The New 
Life; ch. vii. The Doctrine of Predestination; ch. 
viii. The Doctrine of the Church; ch. ix. The 
Last Things. 

III. The Development of the Doctrine in the Epistles 

written in Prison (Colossians, Ephesians, Philip- 
pians, Philemon). Ch. i. The Pauline Founda- 
tions; ch. ii. Further Development of Doctrine. 

IV. The Teaching of the Pastoral Epistles. One 

chapter — Christianity as Doctrine. 

51. Subject for class essay. The Sources of St. Paul's 
Theology. 

52. Luther in the Wartburg. 



152 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

54-65. As these paragraphs are nothing but a para- 
phrase of Rom. i.-viii., pupils ought to be asked to com- 
pare with them the corresponding paragraphs of the 
Epistle. 

56. Compare Tholuck, The Moral Character of 
Heathendom. 

65. On Paul's Psychology see the monograph of 
Simon and the Handbooks of Biblical Psychology by 
Delitzsch and Beck : also Heard, The Tripartite Nature 
of Man, Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, and Dick- 
son, St. Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit. 

67. Compare Somerville, St. Paul's Conception of 
Christ, and Knowling, The Testimony of St. Paul to 
Christ. 

51. Where does Paul mention his journey to Arabia? 

56. What is the connection between moral and intellectual 
degeneracy ? 

62. Where does Paul speak of the Gospel as a" mystery, 
and what does he mean by this word ? 

65. Does Paul divide human nature into two or into 
three sections ? Do you know the theological 
names for these alternatives ? Does Paul regard 
the unregenerate man as possessing the part of 
human nature which he calls "spirit" ? 

67. Enumerate the incidents of Christ's earthly life referred 
to by Paul. 



Chapter V 

On this subject see the first two chapters of Conybeare 
and Howson; New Testament Times of Hausrath or 
Schiirer; Fairweather, From the Exile to the Advent, 
Moss, From Malachi to Matthew. 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 153 

72. Subject of class essay: The Origin and Signifi- 
cance of the name "Christian. 1 ' 

72. By ivhat other names were the Christians called in 
New Testament times, among themselves or among 
their enemies ? 

78. What did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews 
severally contribute to Christianity ? 



Chapter VI 

The aim of this Handbook, as of The Life of Jesus 
Christ in the same series, being to show at a single 
glance the general course of the life and the principal 
objects it touched, a good many details have been omitted. 
This is especially the case in this chapter and in chapter 
x. The omissions cause those great features to stand out 
more prominently which details are apt to obscure. In 
this chapter an endeavor has been made to show in this 
way what were the different regions into which the apostle 
traveled, and what the peculiarities and the extent of the 
work he did in each. But in an extended Bible Class 
course the lessons will naturally go more into detail, and 
perhaps the incidents which took place in each town may 
generally form a lesson. Here, therefore, and at the 
beginning of chap, x., a few hints may be given of the 
viewpoints for the lessons, in so far as these are not 
already supplied in the text. 

Acts xiii. 1-12. First Footsteps of Christian Missions. 
" 14-52. Antioch. Paul's Missionary Method, 
xiv. 1-6. Iconium. Among the Jews. 
' ' 6~20. Lystra. Among the Heathens. 
" 21-28. Paul as a Pastor. 
xv. Paul as an Ecclesiastic. 



154 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

Acts xvi. 1-6. The New Companion. 

6~10. Opening up Virgin Soil. 
12-40. Pkilippi, Transfiguration and Dis- 
figuration of Humanity, 
xvii. 1-9. Thessalonica. An Honorable Reproach. 
10-14. Bercea. Rare Freedom from Preju- 
dice. 
15—34. Athens. The Gospel and Intellectual 
Curiosity, 
xviii. 1-3. Corinth. Paul's earthly Home. 

4—17. The Missionary's Discouragements 
and Encouragements. 
" 23-28. A polished Shaft in God's Quiver. 
xix. Ephesus. See the text. Also, Conflict of 
Christianity with Vested Interests and 
Mob Violence. 

79. Howson^s Companions of St. Paul. 

81. A minute inspection of Acts xiii. 9 will confirm 
the view here given of the change of name, though it is 
difficult to get rid of the idea that the conversion of the 
governor, who bore the same name, had something to do 
with it. 

84. On the worship of the synagogue see Farrar's 
Life of Christ, i. 220. 

89. On the Council of Jerusalem, which took place 
between the first and second journeys, see ch. ix. 

93. What is here said of the plan of the Acts explains 
still more strikingly the meagerness of the record of the 
third journey. 

97. Beroea was to the south of the Via Egnatia. 

99. Subject of class essay: The Influence of Chris- 
tianity on the Lot of Woman. 

103. Subject of class essay: Paul at Athens. 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 155 

104. Subject of class essay: Paul and Socrates. 

113. A strong argument against the mythical theory 
of the miracles of our Lord may be constructed from the 
paucity of the miracles attributed to Paul. If that age 
naturally wove miraculous legends round great names, 
why did it not encircle Paul with a continuous web of 
miracle? and why does the New Testament admit that 
the Baptist worked no miracle ? 

114. See Ramsay, Letters to the Seven Churches. 

79- Give a list of Paul's companions and friends men- 
tioned in the New Testament. 

84. What were the charges generally brought against 
him before the authorities ? 

91. Where in his writings does he mention Barnabas 
and Mark? 

93. Give the places in Acts where the items of this cata- 

logue are recorded. 

94. Mention other classical associations of this region. 
98. What two kings of Macedonia are famous in history? 

102. Expand these allusions to Greek history. 

103. Give a number of the names associated with the 

golden age of Athens and mention what they 

were famous for. 
108. Find out all the visions mentioned in Paul's life 3 

and prove that they were given him at the crises 

of his history. 
110. Distinguish our Asia and Asia Minor from the Asia 

of the New Testament. 



Chapter VII 



y7 

In the chronological table, p. 138, the dates of the 
Epistles have already been given and the points of the 
history indicated where they come in. It is a pity the 



156 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

Epistles are not arranged in chronological order in our 
Bibles. Their characteristics may be mentioned : 

1 and 2 Thessalonians . Simple beginnings. Attitude 
to Christ's second coming. 

1 Corinthians. Picture of an apostolic church. 

2 Corinthians. Paul's portrait of himself. 
Galatians. Vehement polemic against Judaizers. 
Romans. Paul's gospel. 

Philemon. Example of Christian courtesy. 
Colossians and Ephesians. Paul's later gospel. 
Philippians. Picture of Roman imprisonment. 

1 Timothy and Titus. Form of the church. 

2 Timothy. The last scenes. 

Ramsay places Galatians before 1 and 2 Corinthians; 
compare p. 139 above. 

116. Compare Shaw, The Pauline Epistles. 

118. On Paul's style see Farrar's Excursus at the 
close of vol. i. The comparison of it to that of Thu- 
cydides is more dignified than that of the text, but less 
true. 

119. Inspiration did not interfere with natural char- 
acteristics of style. It made the writer not less but more 
himself, while of course it imparted to the products of 
his pen a divine value and authority. 

120-127. Howson's Character of St. Paul; Speer, 
The Man Paul; Hausrath, 45-57; Baur's remarks (ii. 
294 ff. ) on his intellectual character are very good. But 
the principal sources are 2 Corinthians and Acts xx. 

122. Farrar's treatment of Paul's bodily infirmities 
is a serious blot on his book ; for these are obtruded with 
a frequency and exaggeration which produce an impres- 
sion quite different from that made by the references to 
them in Scripture. This is still truer of Baring- Gould's 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 157 

Study of St. Paul. For a treatment of the same subject, 
realistic, but full of sympathy and delicacy, see Monod. 
Ramsay is of opinion that the " thorn in the flesh" was 
chronic malarial fever. 

122 ff. Illustrate these paragraphs fully from Scripture. 
123. Compare Paul with Livingstone and other mission- 
aries. 



Chapter VIII 

On this subject compare Neander's Planting of Chris- 
tianity, Book ii., ch. 7, and Schaff's Church History; also 
Bannerman's Church of Christ. This chapter is only a 
piecing together of the information scattered through 1 
Corinthians. It would be well to get pupils to seek out 
the passages of the Epistle which correspond to the differ- 
ent paragraphs. A picture of a Pauline church of a 
later date might be compiled in the same way from the 
Pastoral Epistles. 

136. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was revealed "at 
sundry times and in divers manners," and the complete 
doctrine is to be obtained by uniting the representations 
of the various writers of Scripture. In the New Testa- 
ment there are four phases — 1. In the Synoptical Gospels 
the Holy Spirit is set forth in His influence on the human 
nature of Christ ; 2. in the Acts and Paul, as the power 
for founding the Church and converting the world ; 3. in 
Paul as the principle of the new life of Christians ; 4. in 
John as the Comforter. 

138. Compare the irregularities of other periods of 
vast change, e.g., the Reformation. 

144. On the extent to which an authoritative ecclesi- 



158 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

astical system is given in the New Testament compare 
Jus Divinum Presbyterii and Hooker's Ecclesiastical 
Polity. 

130. Give the names of the principal games of ancient 

times, derived from the places where they were held. 

131. Where are churches mentioned as meeting in the 

houses of individuals ? 

132. Explain the words "barbarian," "Scythian," in 

Col. iii. 11. 
135. What modern divine endeavored to revive these phe- 
nomena, and what is the name of the church he 
founded ? What is the meaning of the word 
charism " ? Were the tongues of Pentecost the 
same as those of 1 Corinthians f Give instances 
in which New Testament prophets did predict 
future events. 



Chapter IX 

The criticism which seeks to distintegrate the New 
Testament writings and set the apostles against one an- 
other is founded on a revival of the claim of the Judai- 
zers that their propaganda had the sanction of Peter and 
the other original apostles. In a Handbook like this it 
is impossible to discuss at any length the Tubingen 
Theory. But some of its points are silently met in the 
text ; and the whole theory is answered by an attempt to 
give a view of the course of the controversy which covers 
all the facts. The distinction drawn in paragraphs 159 ff. 
between the central question in dispute and a subordinate 
aspect of the controversy will be found to clear up many 
intricacies. Compare Sorley's Jewish Christians and 
Judaism. 

This chapter is full of references to passages in Acts 
and Galatians, which pupils ought to be asked to produce. 



HINTS AND QUESTIONS 159 

Chapter X 

Viewpoints for lessons on details omitted or only 
slightly referred to in the text : 

Acts xx. 4-16. Paul the Hirer of Laborers for Christ's 
Vineyard: the Unwearied Preacher (Troas). 
" 17-38. The Man of Heart (Miletus). 
xxii. Final Effort to save his Country, 
xxiii. 1-10. In the Dock where he had placed 

others, 
xxiii. 22-27. The Preacher of Righteousness, 
xxvi. The Inspired Student, 
xxvii. Paul as a Ruler of Men. 

xxviii. The benevolence of Nature and that of Grace 
(Malta). 

171. See notes on ch. iv., p. 141. 

The authenticity of Ephesians and Colossians can 
only be denied by ignoring the impression of majesty and 
profundity which they have made on the greatest minds. 
(See the Introductions in Meyer and Alford.) What 
other mind of those ages except Paul's could have erected 
a structure so magnificent on the very foundations of the 
Epistle to the Romans ? or in what other mind was there 
such a union of the doctrinal and the ethical ? 

In John's writings the relation of believers to Christ 
is illustrated by a far higher comparison : it is compared 
to the union of Father and Son in the Deity. 

172. See Ernesti: The Ethic of Paul ; also Juncker. 

174. See Smith's Voyage of St. Paul; also Sir Will- 
iam Ramsay's article on Roads and Travel in Hastings' 
Dictionary of the Bible, vol. v. 

176. Burrus, the Praetorian Prefect. So Conybeare 
and Howson ; but Ramsay, following Mommsen, holds the 



160 THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL 

officer to have been the princeps peregrinorum, whose 
quarters lay on the Ccelian Hill. 

On the various kinds of imprisonment in Roman law 
see Ramsay's Roman Antiquities, ch. ix. 

177-182. The materials for this account of Paul's 
prison life at Rome are chiefly gathered from the Epistle 
to the Philippians. 

184. On the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles see 
essay by Findley in Sabatier's The Apostle Paul. The 
comparative lack of doctrinal matter in them is accounted 
for by the fact that they were written to ministers well 
acquainted with his doctrinal system. 

188. At Tre Fontane, to the south of Rome, the 
traditional scene of the execution is still pointed out ; and 
not far off stands St. Paul' s-outside-the- Walls, one of the 
most gorgeous churches in the world. 

164. Trace out the different collections which Paul is re- 
corded to have been engaged with. 

166. What were the courts of the temple ; and what was 
the name of the Roman fortress which overlooked 
them f 

171. Row often does the phrase "in Christ " (or "in " 

with pronouns referring to Christ) occur in Ephe- 
sians ? 

172. Give examples from Paul's writings of the applica- 

tion of great principles to small duties. 
175. Give the names and localities of other great Roman 

roads. Describe a Roman triumph. 
179. Narrate the story of Onesimus, gathering it from 

the Epistle to Philemon. 
184. Explain the name of the Pastoral Epistles, 



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